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Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

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Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#51

Post by thesnide »

racl101 wrote: post #46
tester457 wrote: post #41

Videos are one of the most important parts of marketing projects. Github projects without gifs get less attention. Humans are visual and don't like scouring through a readme before seeing some action first.

Read me says: > "Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones"

That was before YouTube got all the braintime drain...

Now, I'm not so sure it would succeed if no nice visuals.

Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#52

Post by syngrog66 »

I've been guilty in the past of putting lots of effort into building, tuning and polishing something which... well, nobody wanted

Or that nobody was willing to pay for, anyway

Or not enough to make it lucrative

Or heck to not even put it in the general ballpark of being minimally sustainable.

Totally changed my mindset since

Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#53

Post by haswell »

SCUSKU wrote: post #49
ary wrote: post #48

A simple maxim that our investors basically demanded of us was: "Sell, design, build". Accepting that approach had two pretty noticeable benefits: 1) We didn't spend a lot of time building something nobody wanted (which is the main theme of this post). 2) We experimented a lot with our product design because we knew we'd be getting feedback quickly and thus could take interesting risks. There was little "analysis par…

How do you sell something without something to show off? For example, let's say I have an idea for an app. Naturally I would think to design a few mockups, then post it on Twitter, Reddit, etc. And then if people actually cared enough to sign up for an email list, then build. So in this case, design -> sell -> build .

I think this is where the difference between mockups and fully realized designs comes to the forefront.

Simple mockups can communicate an idea effectively enough to sell the idea. But there’s a large delta between a pitchable mock and a design that is ready to build.

Those early mocks rarely match the later designs in my experience, and I think can be kept under the “sell” umbrella.

Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#57

Post by rmason »

Show and tell doesn't always work as he describes it. You can go out and meet with people and describe what you want to build. It might work or it might not.

I've found it far more useful to meet with the target audience. Your sole goal is to find out if the problem exists and if its bad enough they're willing to pay to get it solved.

The Mom Test book is invaluable because whether you get truthful information or not depends on how you ask the questions. Like a lot of things in startups asking the right questions is counterintuitive.

Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#58

Post by udkl »

esafak wrote: post #39

Try getting them to put money down for a discount or other incentive. The best signal is paying up; promises are cheap.

I can second this. With your demo you proved interest. However you now need to ascertain if there is enough 'paying interest'.

Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#59

Post by contingencies »

ary wrote: post #48

A simple maxim that our investors basically demanded of us was: "Sell, design, build". Accepting that approach had two pretty noticeable benefits: 1) We didn't spend a lot of time building something nobody wanted (which is the main theme of this post). 2) We experimented a lot with our product design because we knew we'd be getting feedback quickly and thus could take interesting risks. There was little "analysis par…

Sell, design, build.

Nice one. Added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#60

Post by contingencies »

anticlickwise wrote: post #45
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #9

It's a tough balance to strike, especially with hardware. I'd love to be able to put together a preorder page to validate demand for my next McGuffin, but it's very difficult to know specs, cost, and appearance before at least a representative prototype has been tested and quotes obtained from suppliers. And it takes a great deal of time and engineering effort to get to that point. Of course I could show off somethin…

Thanks. i cant even imagine how hard it is with hardware. Dont think lean development applies there

Having migrated from software to (very complex) hardware over most of the last decade I would say there are still lean principles, just with different cost and value metrics. For instance, "lean" as an emphasis on rapid iteration has great basis in hardware R&D.

Musk's 4th rule of manufacturing: Accelerate cycle times. You're moving too slowly, go faster. But if you're digging your grave, don't dig it faster.

... via https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

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