Create A Launch Team For Your Product
The hardest thing for any tech startup is to find product-market fit. I sometimes think that it’s easier, for example, for a restaurant startup — all you need is decent food and good location (or delivery and good photos), but I doubt that it is. When you have a new product, it’s just not clear whether your time tracking or expenses tracking app will get traction or not, whereas I can imagine sushi or burgers will always be in demand. Nonetheless, tech startups are much more attractive to entrepreneurs. They have a much higher risk/reward ratio, huge upside, and minimal downside.
Luckily, in a tech world, there’s a great way to figure out if there’s any demand for what you want to do. Not only the business itself can be completely virtual, but you can test the market without having an actual product. I wonder if restaurants do something like that too. I’m talking about customer development — a process where you interview people that represent your audience to learn what their problems are and how they solve them right now. Then you make a decision about whether to create a new solution or not and present it to the very same people to get feedback.
How Apple lets others find product-market fit for them
With every update to its operating systems, Apple is adding new features. Interestingly enough, these features mimic other quite successful apps that were available on Apple’s app store for years. For example, a recent update to the “Notes” app makes it extremely similar to Evernote. Evernote is still more advanced and feature-packed, but it looks like Apple noticed that a lot of users are finding note-taking functionality useful and added a similar app to its OS to make them available out of the box. The same thing happens to the “todo” app — now you can add sublists, sync your todos between devices, set reminders, add todo items to a specific date, and many more. Same way, it looks like Apple noticed that a lot of users are using all these productivity apps and responded by adding one to the core system
Now, I won’t argue if what Apple is doing is good or bad. They possibly have mimicked many apps whose functionality became part of the core system, forcing developers to lose their profits and compete for the users. But what they are doing is an excellent example of listening to users and doing what they need. If a certain app downloaded by a lot of people, it means that there is a problem that the app solves. From the user perspective, it’s great to have all these apps included with the OS.
How to keep in touch with your beta users
You can use the same approach and research what solutions your audience is using to fix their problems. Chances are that people aren’t happy with various aspects of those existing solutions. The key here is to do it continuously, not just before building a product. You need to constantly keep in touch with your customers and make sure you are on track — just like Apple is constantly monitoring what people want and need.
Create a beta launch team.
During the initial customer development phase, you will be reaching out to people and interviewing them about existing problems. Once you’ve learned enough, tell them that you are going to create a better solution and ask if they want to be part of your launch team. If the problem is severe enough, there’s a big chance they’ll agree.
A launch team is basically a group of users that gets early access to the initial release of the application and gets to tell you how they want the product to look and behave. The benefit for beta users is obvious — they can get their hands on the solution earlier than anyone else and have it tailored for them. The benefit for you is that you get free beta testers that give you early feedback and guide you on what’s working and what needs to be adjusted.
After the initial launch, keeps engaging with your team of beta testers. Provide them with a free plan so that they continue using the application after launch and make sure that it is useful to them. As your user base grows, you will get bug reports and feature requests. Run them by your beta users and get their feedback. Product development never ends, and new features and updates are released all the time. Your beta testers will be invaluable throughout the product lifecycle.
Offer your beta users a VIP program with additional perks.
Make them feel special and valued. Show your gratitude for the provided feedback. Celebrate your early users by writing stories about them on your blog and recording interviews with them. Ask them for testimonials and reviews once they use your app for a while — those early reviews will be invaluable at the early stages.
The whole point is to treat the beta users as a group of people who support you as loyal fans and will do a lot to help you out. If you really solve their problems, you can expect them to be willing to help you out and support you. They are your raving fans!
Do you have a launch team? If not, it might be a good time to create one. If you’ve already done customer development, try to remember people who were interested in your solution the most and reach out to them. Ask if they will be willing to join a launch team and get early access.
