Stop wasting my time and validate the market’s need!
Sometimes I’m fed up with startups that haven’t gone out and spoken to their potential customers…
Every fricking time I go mentor any teams, I understand they (well, at least most of them) haven’t field tested their produce.
They’ve built a product/service/platform and are now looking for help with marketing or fundraising.
But they’ve never found the first, ten people who’d say they’re in love with the thing. That this is the next best thing for them, and thus they’d make sure their every single friend would know about it…
Moreover, they’ve not even gone out to look for such people — wherever they might be!
Building a product/service/platform for yourself is not enough!
It’s the marketing and sales that will eventually help to either make it or break it. Although, it’s not enough when you’re only investing in Facebook’s share value.
Instead, it’s the unscalable activities and hundreds of Medium posts that work. As well as building the thing all your customers dream about. All leading towards the perfect idea.
This means one needs to go out while the merchandise isn’t close to becoming ready. Right after the initial mobile-first website’s up and running. Yup, the one that’s basically not doing anything but load and exist!
At least that’s what we did at Shipitwise right after launching the site that only had a well-hid form. We’d built the real minimum viable product — only asking for an e-mail. And that was enough to serve our initial customers throughout the first months. As long as we had enough data to build the better thing…
In fact, it’s quite simple steps that everyone should follow:
- Assemble the team and detect a headache you’re ought to be soothing;
- Simplify the concept until there’s almost nothing else that could be removed;
- Build this dreadful product/service/platform;
- Go to church, mall or online (depending on your conviction) and talk about it with RANDOM people.
- Adjust the thing based on their feedback and go back to the second item on this list.
PS! Always charging real money when they show interest to test it out — bills need to get paid.
But be ready to close the shop, as not every idea is worth pursuing…
However, if all checks out and people indeed hand over their lunch money, then let’s talk further!
—
Did you enjoy this rant? Is there something else you’d love to hear about? Or can I help you in any other way? Please let me know via Snapchat, Instagram or Twitter.
