Let's build a product (Part 1): Step one, come up with an idea
Everything started off as an idea
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I have been thinking and planning and stuck in analysis paralysis to get this idea off the ground. Trying to make it perfect. But guess what building a product is never perfect and it usually always messy. I recently spoke to a friend and he told me ‘just start!’
So I'm taking his advice and just starting!
In this series I am going to “build in public” with you guys. I'm going to take you from ideation to proof of concept. I am super excited about this and hope you are as well! If you're not, don't tell me.
With all that being said I will start next week….
Just kidding. We are starting right now!
What is the first step to making a product?
Generally speaking a product is built to solve a problem. The problem can be as big as a operating system to as small as a step counter.
There are many problems in our lives. Some are worth solving and some are not. Let’s take for example Juicero, which would provide the end user with juice by pressing the juice out of a proprietary bag. This machine was also connected to WiFi and it only cost $699! What a steal, right?! It even received 120 million dollars in investments. To their surprise this product was a disaster and they had to slash the price to $399 within a year.
The reason I bring this up is to highlight a product that was just adding unnecessary steps to a process that no one is complaining about. How many of us have actually complained ‘I wish I could squeeze the juice out of the bottle of juice.
on the contrary a very successful product the Snuggie was a commercial success. We all mocked it the first time we saw the ridiculous commercials. But it was solving an actual problem that all of us have faced. Having to take our arms out of a warm blanket to use our arms. Yes it was basically a bath robe that you just wore backwards but people didn’t care. It became part of pop culture.
The reason I picked these two products to highlight is because I wanted to show opposite ends of the spectrum. Both were ridiculous but only one actually solved a problem that people were willing to pay for.
What is the goal of your product?
This is something you need to think about in the beginning. What is your ultimate goal for making this product.
You are creating it for yourself only
You are creating it for yourself but think others could benefit from it
You are creating it and will make it free for others to use and build upon
You want to create a lifestyle business
You want to rule the world
You are creating this for yourself
This is a great way to learn create something under almost zero pressure. You know the customer very well and you know their problem very intimately. You know what features are necessary and which are not. More importantly you know the priority of these features. We only have a limited amount of time and we have to prioritize wisely.
There is a term for this, it’s called “dogfooding.” Dogfooding is when you use your own product. This allows you to create a better product because you are able to empathize with the users. The term empathy will show up a lot along this process, so get used to hearing it.
Generally speaking when you are creating something for yourself you are not looking to make any money and are generally not under much pressure to finish or produce (depending on the problem). The user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) is not as important.
You are creating it for yourself but think others could benefit from it
This will be exactly everything we talked about earlier but now you are banking on others having the same problem as you. This is usually a good bet. There are many large companies that started like this. Some examples include Square and Dropbox. Both were created to solve a problem that the founder had.
In this case, unlike when you are building just for yourself, you will need to have a decent UI/UX, especially if you plan to make any money from it.
You are creating it and will make it free for others to use and build upon
This is one of my favorite types of products mainly because I am open source fanboy. Open source has many benefits. It allows for faster development because anyone can see the code or diagram and submit their improvements. This in turns builds a community of champions and users of your product. There are also many ways to make money from open source projects (we will discuss this another time). To prove that here are some large opensource projects; MongoDB, Docker, and Elastic to name a few.
You want to create a lifestyle business
You are probably asking yourself what is a lifestyle business? A lifestyle business is one where the business is able to provide you a comfortable lifestyle. These businesses are great. they don’t end up trading on the stock market but it’s a great place to be!
You want to rule the world
These are the businesses like Google, Epic, Amazon to name a few. These are rare but achievable. I won’t spend too much time on this one right now. I do want to break down some of these companies/products and see how they became successful. Let me know if you’d be interested in that.
Know your customer
The most important thing when building a product is to understand your customer; you should know them like you know yourself. This is why building a product where you are the ideal customer is easier. The more diverse your audience the more complicated your UX will become.
I have no idea right now how many parts there will be in this series but I would love it if some of you come along for the ride. I will be building a product in conjunction with this series. My initial goal was to build something and then release this series but that did not happen and I didn’t want to keep delaying it. Building a product is not straightforward. It’s messy and there is a lot to learn along the way. Hopefully you guys are excited to join in the journey. I would also encourage you to start building a product even if its just for the experience.
In the next part we will go over user interviews and how to go about them. Also, I will go over what exactly I will be building, and why.
How can you support others:
Please consider donating to the less fortunate. This is a reminder not only for you but also for myself.
or donate to a charity of your choice. A little bit goes a long way.
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I hope you have a great day!
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