Opinions expressed by entrepreneurs’ colleagues are their very own.
For entrepreneurs, inventing a great idea is unfortunately an easy part. Even after you had a moment of sunshine bulb, you conducted market research and created a marketing strategy, you continue to need to find out how to attract your first customers.
The difficult reality is that an amazing idea is not really amazing if you do not have a way to get it in front of individuals. This is called “cold problem” – a challenge for building a momentum when a company, product or platform does not have the initial user base or activity. This is particularly essential for corporations based on network effects – think Airbnb or eBay – if the value of the product or service increases when more people use it.
While the cold start problem could be very difficult for bilateral platforms, this is something that every entrepreneur should think about.
Build a minimal live product (MVP)
The advice I share many times? Build MVP.
I borrowed the idea of MVP from the leader of thoughts Eric Ries, who defines The term as a version of the recent product that enables the team to gather the maximum amount of approved learning about customers with the slightest effort. In other words, the goal is to test the idea at a minimal cost, which can cause the response of the goal recipients, which may help pave the path of future iteration.
After building MVP, releasing it is the best way to get grip. Even if you get only a few people visiting your site, some will probably turn out to be users. These users provide worthwhile information: how lively are they? Do they still use the product for a very long time? If not, why?
The great thing in MVPS is that they are quick to build and provide many vital data. But even higher, building a low-cost, imperfect version gives the founders a probability to try their hands in various recent skills, which they are going to need as their company develops, equivalent to design. Without pressure that he’ll have a probability to experiment, collect opinions for the first time and improve so that each future version is much higher.
Another difficult truth: if you are not lucky with your MVP, you will likely not be with a more fake version. I had many ideas for a startup before I landed on Jotform, a company that has been building a form that I have been leading over the past two many years. But if after six months the test did not start? I’d throw it in rubbish with other ideas and began with something else.
Build on the hot market
Time is all the pieces, and the success of the startup is often based on it. Take, for example, Instagram: published in 2010, used the improved photographic capabilities of iPhone 4 and the growing demand for immediate photo sharing. Compare this with the debut of Google Glass from 2013: Wearing technology has not yet turn out to be the mainstream, and many saw the idea of attaching a computer to the face as terrifying and dystopian. While other aspects contributed to Glass’s failure, the important problem was the lack of a market prepared for this product at that point.
By building on the hot market, you increase the possibilities of your product to attract users. At the moment AI is all over the place, and people actively want to accept AI products and services. Paying special attention to trends pays off: I launched jotform among the increase in interest in online products, partly driven by the impressive Gmail debut.
Of course, launching on such a market is also associated with risk. Competition could be stiff, so you wish to have a unique value proposal to stand out. There is also a risk of market saturation. None of this stuff, nevertheless, is excluding transactions – Google introduced the bell of the forms shortly after the jotform launched and we survived. The key is to create an excellent product that individuals will proceed to use even in the face of alternatives. After all, if many similar products have more or less similar functions, but none of them removed, it signifies that none does it so well.
Learn to love the 50/50 principle
One of the principles in which I live is called the 50/50 principle, which dictates that the startups spend half the time for product development and the other half for marketing. As a developer, it was a painful revelation because I preferred to focus on lonely building. But if the idea is a plus marketing product, you’ll be able to absolutely neglect any variable.
Attracting and transforming users could be done through targeted marketing, which incorporates knowledge of goal recipients, their pain, what messages will resonate with them and how to get them. In Jotform, we have achieved many successes of reaching users through blogs, which we strategically publish on the platforms that visit them. Feedback is your best friend – there is no higher way of learning whether you successfully implement the 50/50 principle than you communicate with the people you wish to use.
Attraction-and maintaining a user requires strategic considering: build MVP to test your idea, run a mature with possibilities on the market and iterate based on real opinions. Time, perseverance and the ability to adapt are crucial. Even if your first attempt did not start, it is a stepping stone to find something that works.