Issue#5: Execution >>> Ideas
Issue#5: Execution >>> Ideas
Rapid prototyping early ideas
Reading time: 3m15s Seasoned entrepreneurs know the old adage that “execution is far more important than ideas” but what does this actually mean in practice.
In short test your ideas with people early and often.
But I have great idea…
Unfortunately in the early stages most first time founders will worry that anyone they talk to will steal their idea...
This thinking is common and leads to a number of situations that will make you seem like you don't know what you're doing even more...
Examples of this include:
Building in "stealth" mode - there are very few reasons why stealth mode actually makes sense (here are some pros/cons of stealth). In my experience 99% of startups need to get their product into people's hands asap!
Not doing competitor research - I still catch myself doing this sometimes but the bury your head on the sand approach is probably the second worst thing you can do (after not talking to customers early)
Asking VC's to sign an NDA - here are some links to why this is impossible for VCs to do
Gathering feedback early and rapidly especially from customers is the single best thing you can do for your fledgling start up.
To do this we can work in three steps: Design an image based prototype, gather public feedback, and pre-sell product.
Build a design prototype
The core idea is to show your content rather than try and explain it in words.
Why this works? Think of the "picture paints a thousand words" idiom.
How to can I use this for my start up? If you lack coding skills then you can use a mock-up prototyping tool such as invision or figma to show your ideas to people.
Gather public feedback
Once you have some early designs and have shown a number of people it's time to work out if your idea will be enticing to the target customer or to investors (if you are keen on this route).
In B2C product lines this can be easily tested in several ways:
Social posts - using social media put out content around your product and see the response
Ads - similar to point 1 (if you have a bit of budget) it's also good to test paid acquisition at this point. Measuring this success you can show a number of metrics to investors.
Ideally you can make a small landing page linked to the social media marketing posts. The key bit is to have a buy now button to measure how many people are converting at this stage.
B2B can be trickier. You can use the methods above (as buyers at big companies also use social media especially LinkedIn).
If you are lucky enough to know a potential buyer you could use a pitch deck to run them through the idea in a meeting. This way has the added benefit of forcing you to be succinct in your comms.
Pre-selling products
Based on how step 2 goes it may be worth investigating if you can sell the product straight away. This is the ultimate (and scariest) form of feedback.
B2B you could agree to do a POC with the company i.e. you would build the a version product for the company you are working with.
As an example I have made an airtable based application for a company I work with as a POC. So far they are liking and using it. This tells me I am solving a real problem.
B2C is straightforward enough - lots of ecommerce / DTC companies presell their products to fund manufacturing. This can be done directly to customers via a Web store or something like a crowd funding campaign can also be highly effective.
It takes guts to do this step but there's a famous quote from Reid Hoffman that says:
“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.”
Reid Hoffman
That’s it!
All in all there are a number of steps you can use to test the strength and commercial promise of your ideas.
The key part is to get them out there and talk to customers.
Good luck!
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