This is the first lesson in the series: How Non-Technical Founders Can Bring a Product to Market.
By Poornima Vijayashanker
One of the most common stories that I hear from people who reach out to me is the following: “I’m really stuck, I’m tired, and I’m about to burnout. I’ve rebuilt this product 6 times and we’ve had 10,000 people download it or 10M people sign up, but we just cannot monetize. I don’t know what to do or what to build to get people to pay for our product.”
So then I ask them 2 very basic questions: “What is your value proposition? And, what problem are you trying to solve?”
Their response is of course a head scratch followed by, “What do you mean, we built this thing.” And they point to the product.
I dig in a little deeper, “Well what problem does it solve?”
But they’re just not sure. It’s composed of a lot of features
So then I move on to asking them, “Who are your customers?”
And they respond once again with something generic like, “Ugh, women…”
That’s when I have to tell them, “Stop building! Don’t build anything more.”
Of course they are baffled, “You’re an engineer, why are you telling us not to build anything?”
“You’re problem is not that you don’t know how to build a product or that you don’t know how to get people to try-it-out. The problem is that you don’t know how to convey the value of your product to people. So you don’t have an engineering problem, which is why I don’t want you to build anything more. I want you to think about running an experiment.”
Now you too as entrepreneurs and founders can run an experiment without a product. I’ll explain the specifics of the experiment in the next lecture, but for now I want you to understand two concepts:
The first concept is called an early adopter.
An early adopter is someone who is eager to try new things, that is their mindset. As a result, they are open to trying new products, solutions to acute problems, and having interesting experiences. They do not expect a fully polished product.
Contrast this to a mainstream customer who needs validation in one of the following forms: hearing about it from several friends, seeing that the company manufacturing the product has several seals of approval, or that it’s been around for awhile.
Before you have built up an credibility as company or built a product, you need to find early adopters. People who are willing to use and pay for your product, despite what it might lack in terms of features, and what how many bugs it might have in it.
The second concept is called value proposition.
You are proposing that a customer can expect to receive a certain experience or benefit from your product or service in exchange for a certain amount of money.
Notice that this definition does not include, “My product has XYZ feature.”
Before building anything it’s important to understand who the early adopter of your product is, and what the value proposition of your product is.
In the next lecture, I will explain how to run an experiment in order to figure out who your early adopters are, and what your startup idea’s value proposition is.
Did you enjoy this lesson? Got any questions for me on it? Please let it the comments below and I’ll be happy to answer it!
Want more content on this topic? Checkout the following posts:
Already built an MVP and ready to attract customers and generate revenue? Then check out our upcoming GROW IT Course here.
