3 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Launching Your Next Product
You gotta elevate.
These days, there are a hundred new products, tools, or social networks launched every single day. Everyone’s so certain their idea will be the one to pull ahead of the rest. But in an age where running a Lean Startup is the standard, how do you set yourself apart?
For my partner Tyler and I, this is the question that keeps us up at night. We’re in the midst of building Kowalla, a platform for showing off the projects that you’re building in real-time. For a while now, we’ve been following the lean startup methodology to plan, design, and build our product. We’ve been so focused on following this process, that until recently, we neglected to create a plan to release and distribute our product. If you had asked us 2 months ago, I bet we would have claimed we were smart enough to know that the “if you build it, they will come” mindset doesn’t actually work. But we weren’t actually demonstrating it with our actions. Before we knew it, we had tunnel vision; and we had it bad.
A few weeks ago, we started to become more aware of our situation as our MVP deadline drew nearer. Sometimes thinking, “How cool would it be if we launch and our product is a hit?” but more often wondering, “What if it isn’t?” As avid students of Silicon Valley successes and failures, we know the latter option is the most likely scenario. But besides building a great product, how can we help ensure our success?
For us, the answer lies in a book called Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth, by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares. In it, Weinberg and Mares outline methods used to build an audience for your business so that when it’s time to launch, your startup can’t be ignored. The key growth driver focuses on building the right distribution channels so that your company or product is positioned front and center for your target audience. They define 19 different distribution channels to learn about and determine what’s best suited for your business or product. This may sound excessive; the point is to force you to think outside the box. It doesn’t mean everyone should take out a billboard ad, but it could highlight the value of attending trade shows, hosting local events, or even some kind of publicity stunt. Many traditional channels are dismissed or forgotten by people in tech, but with these 19 options, you’re certain to learn from at least one unexpected traction channel. (Click here for a list of all 19 channels).
In their writing, Weinberg and Mares recommend you spend 50% of your time building distribution channels. This way, when you’re ready to launch, you’re prepared to go directly to your target audience. Assuming you’ve made a good product and put proper time into distribution, you’ll start with a solid foothold in the market. That’s a better start than most companies trying to break into an industry these days. As engineers, Tyler and I would prefer to be able to put our heads down and code like crazy, but we’re coming around to the fact that a product alone doesn’t make a good business.
After learning more about building distribution channels, we asked ourselves 3 key questions to determine how to move forward:
1. What will it cost?
Will this investment into distribution only cost time, or will your distribution strategy require cash as well? Does the increased time to launch hurt you more than the potential benefit of building distribution channels? Is there any guaranteed engagement or revenue you lose if you delay?
For us, our only cost is time. Our plan doesn’t require additional resources besides the increased time investment for release plans, as well as our loss of product development time. The situation could be different for others however. For example, if we had a third co-founder, we may have just assigned one person to focus on distribution the whole time, and only pull in the others as needed.
2. What are the market conditions?
Is your audience clearly defined? Are there competitors racing to beat you to market? Are you known in the community of your target market?
Kowalla is meant to be a platform incorporating pieces of many other platforms, but doesn’t have any 100% direct competitors. We determined that competitor factors don’t need to be heavily weighted, but noted the longest part of our product development process was in clearly defining our market. Carrying this logic over, we decided that further upfront investment to reach our market would save a lot of time and pain of honing in on marketing to our intended audience. Conversely, if someone were releasing an innovative Saas product that has stagnant competitors, then they may not need as much emphasis on the launch as opposed to direct sales leads post-launch.
3. What’s the worst case scenario if we don’t make time to build traction?
Regardless of your answer to the previous two questions, what if you launch your product, and no one cares? How much of a possibility is it that your company or product picks up no traction, and you squander your chance to make a splash? If you doubt your answer even a little bit, then it may be worth re-thinking your strategy.
For us, we evaluated our existing “plan” (make a few blog posts, scream “YOLO”, then post everywhere), and realized we couldn’t live with ourselves without putting more time into the launch plan. This is especially true in the context of a platform like ours, which is intended to offer a community for people. If we’re unable to grab the attention of enough people at launch, then the negative effects could hang over us for many months to come.
As you may have guessed, we’ve decided to split our time to evenly balance building the product and developing distribution channels for our launch. Upon first reading that recommended 50% number, I was skeptical. That’s a lot of time when you’re trying to start a company, not to mention when you’re still limited to working nights and weekends like we are. However, the words of Weinberg and Mares have taught us that in many cases, a proper distribution strategy at launch can be make or break for a fledgling business. It doesn’t guarantee success by any means, but a well executed launch can kick off a trend for viral growth many months after initial release, and we don’t intend to waste that opportunity.
With this in mind, we are marching towards our revised launch date, and tracking our time to ensure we hold ourselves accountable to an even split. If it was not already clear, we’re not experts in this area, but we think this is the best path forward to maximize our chances of success. We still have a lot to learn as we continue our journey towards launching this spring, but we’re determined to make a big splash once we get there.
A bit about us
We’re Kowalla. We believe an opportunity gap exists for people who want to build their dreams, but don’t have a community to collaborate and learn with. We’re building a platform with tools for people to connect and collaborate, no matter the distance between them. Sign up below for more articles like this, and updates as we build.
