Bringing an Idea to Reality
By Justin Reyes After working as a consultant for Murex, a software company for investment banks, Aniss Mansouri had the desire to work on …
By Justin Reyes
After working as a consultant for Murex, a software company for investment banks, Aniss Mansouri had the desire to work on something new that would allow him to work for himself. After seeing the popularity of electronic cigarettes in the French marketplace along with the limited quality of existing competitors, Aniss was confident that this was an idea worth pursuing.
But the path to pursuing his own venture did not come easy. He had little guidance and knew that he needed to change directions, so he kept trying new things to see how they worked.
Aniss was undeterred.
It wasn’t until he saw our Lean Product Development Course featured in an email newsletter sent out by David Kadavy, one of our design instructors, that Aniss found what he was looking for!
He had been struggling to make sense out of all the information and books related to startup and starting new ventures. So he decided to enroll in the course.
In our Lean Product Development Course we teach you how to validate your learning of a market, customer, and product before building! Aniss followed the process, and was able to take small actionable steps that save him time, money, and effort!
Aniss paid close attention to the customer development and discovery lectures, and applied his learnings through the exercises that were provided. He conducted user research interviews by going to clubs, bars, and shopping malls. There he was able to recruit some early adopters to test out his product and sell it to them!
Next he he was able to figure out the right pricing, and his key demographic: mainly mid-20 to 30’s adults who enjoyed going out and were more inclined to quit smoking. He honed his value proposition to meet the needs of his early adopters: electronic cigarettes provide all the advantages of a cigarette except for the nicotine, and are better than wearing patches.
[quote author=”Aniss Mansouri”]Before the course I had no idea how to make my idea a reality. I worked on it for 3 months with a lot of energy but had almost no results. All this complexity was overwhelming.
Thanks to the lean product development course, it all became clear: where to start, where I need to go, and how to get there.[/quote]
Following the exercises from from the lectures on marketing and market research, Aniss was able to take a step back and resist the urge to build by going out and gathering feedback on the packaging as well as the marketing message. His early adopters provided great feedback on the flavor, packaging design, and how they didn’t like the liquid inside the electronic cigarette and not being from France. Taking all this feedback into account helped Aniss iterate and refine his product further.
Through all the office hours, homework assignments, and a supportive like-minded community of instructors such as the founding engineer at mint.com and CEO of BizeeBee, Poornima Vijayashanker as well as marketing instructor, Lyndi Thompson. Aniss was confident that he finally had some good methodology in place as well as momentum to make his idea a reality.
He didn’t have to spend months or years learning the right process, concepts, and countless amounts of money! Through the Lean Product Development Course Aniss was able to get his venture up and running in the right direction.
A few months after the course, he was able to get his first manufacturing deal from China, and has most recently secured his first round of funding to take his venture, Roo, to the next level!
[quote author=”Aniss Mansouri”]The course is tailor made for product development. The teachers knew exactly what I was going through and gave me the guidance and the tools I needed. This saved me months of work by showing where I need to put my energy.[/quote]
If you’re like Aniss and you’re just not sure how to bring our idea to reality, then learn more about the course here. Applications are due this Friday April 18th!
