How do you know your business idea is going to make it? When you build your own mobile app (or business) you take risks every day.
Why do startups fail?
Silicon Valley has so many surveys and datasets describing why startups fail. Essentially they can be distilled into three categories, in this order:
- Customers do not care about your product
- Running out of funding
- Having the wrong team
Number 2 and 3 really speaks to the actual running of the company. These skill sets are required once product-market fit has been ascertained, and this post will not feature them.
Customer Logic
Customers have a specific thought process: they want their problems alleviated and solved. This logic is not always rational. This logic is not always easy to understand and is often emotional (see my next post).
Making a product for customers is the only way to succeed. Customers not caring about what you build will be the end for your business, before it began. Innovation is often linked to the now bastardized term of disruption. The world believes every product, service or technology needs to be disrupted and destroyed. This is just not the case. Disruption only works if it solves a problem for a consumer. Does the consumer believe they have a problem? And is it frequent enough an issue to them that they are willing to pay you for your solution.
So the logic is easy, build for what customers need to solve their problems in a way that makes them want to pay you for it. And yet so many businesses and startups do not know the very specific problem they are trying to destroy.
How do you know what customers want?
GET OUT THE OFFICE (or house, or garage or coffee shop).
Idea to Product
All ideas are a mere hypothesis.
A fancy word for a guess, often educated, sometimes not. Your idea could be based on a problem you have faced in your personal capacity, an inefficiency you have witnessed, an ire you have withstood. But you are a sample of ONE. You are making one of the biggest risks you will take based on a guess of one human – tell me this makes sense?
A focus needs to be held on the potential customer. Build your hypothesis and meet people. Interview them. Speak to what you perceive to be the perfect fit for a market and devise questions that ascertain whether a problem exists or not.
The easiest three questions to identify if a problem exists are:
Is this a frequent problem for people?
Is this problem common to a large spectrum of individuals?
Is this problem worth solving to them, and would they be willing to pay for a service that eliminates it?
Notice that one of these questions speaks about the specific piece of technology or the product you have already concocted in your mind. Technology comes later.
Starting with “why”
This product and market validation form the foundation for your problem statement and mission.
Nailing an effective problem-statement has cascading effects:=
It solidifies a hypothesis regarding product-market fit making testing/iteration cycles faster. Every technology company should preach speed and iteration.
This validation of a problem statement is where I see startups stumbling. These interviews will help shape the product you have in your mind. It will build your product roadmap and it will clearly help you articulate in your future
The problem statement binds your thoughts against the fundamental question every founder should be asking: “Why does this matter?”
So beat customer logic and your own guesses and get out of the office.
