So you have written your business plan, found some potential investors whom you might approach and think if I like my product then so must others?
Well, from my experience it just doesn't work like that. At some point you are going need to get some feedback on your idea. The first step is to get through the barrier that is the resistance to talk about your idea. For some people this is not a problem and will rave about their newest business idea to strangers and repeatedly to friends and family. For some people, especially if you think you have the next big thing you need to tell somebody.
For me, when I first explained my recent business idea to peers with other internet ideas, they didn't really get it, so either my pitch is terrible or i have created something that nobody wants. So rule #1 make something that people want.
Rule #2 is Do not write your Marketing plan as "I will build it and they will come!" You need much more detail and more thought, reasoning and even more detail.
The more people I told, the more average feedback I got about my idea, so I was prepared to share it with even more people I could tell. I listened harder and was able to work on their points to find solutions, I changed my business model to a different angle, I even changed my implementation and then went back on that (This is the trouble of working alone). If you think someone could steal your idea, the likely hood is slim unless you have launched. People have their own ideas and extracting your idea from your head is harder than you think. However in the search for a founder you may wish to be weary of people that are looking at a similar Niche in the market to you. These people are either your best friends or worst enemies, so i would suggest divulging just enough information to engage with somebody but holding back some vital details. You need to get the balance right between sharing your thoughts to get feedback in return, whilst not giving away your idea. Also because people have their own ideas and ambitions, why would they want to get involved or hijack your idea, if there's is much more superior?
Telling friends and family can be a positive or negative experience. Either way as soon as you open your mouth, you are immediately measured on a path or success or failure. You need to build a support network of positive people to encourage and support you. Having a group of negative people can lead to giving up very early, be a drain on your mental resources and lots of "I told you so." Stay away from these people. A typical parenting experience where you were never taken seriously or cannot be trusted is a typical example. Plus a network of friends that are highly competitive will wish that nobody does better then themselves. Secretly nobody wishes you to do well, least of all, get rich if that is what your plans are. You are on your own.
During a recent bout of feedback and conversation at an Entrepreneurial club I met a guy (
@jabventure) who focused on marketing and social behaviour, which I have never formally studied. He made the point that to have an internet based idea, it needs to have some form of behavioural element. For example (some big generalisations coming up!) eBay is the equivalent of going to a car boot sale and buying and selling with people. This is replicated online and gives most a kick out of getting a bargain and likewise seeing the auction go up and up. Dating sites is an obvious one, social networking sites allow people to share experiences namely through updates but looking at other's photos is key to Facebook's success. So to have a human behaviour in your internet based idea, takes a little thinking. You have to consider what the interaction is in real-life and then replicate that online.
I'm going to quote some text from Paul Graham here, which answers a pressing question.
I have multiple start-up ideas. How do I decide which to work on?
Work on the one that will cause the most immediate, concrete improvement in users' lives. Don't worry too much at first about competitors, or how users will find out about it, or how to make money. But don't work on something that's going to take ten years, either. (In technology, ten years rounds up to never.)
Google is a good example. Everyone needs Web search, and the founders probably had something that significantly improved their own ability to find stuff online within the first couple months. And once something starts to work (a) it's enormously encouraging, and (b) it's much clearer what direction to take it in.
(text from
www.paulgraham.com) Paul Graham is a world renowned internet start-up expert and runs
http://ycombinator.com/.
Write a Quesitionnnaire
An example survey is shown below from survery.io. Its a questionnaire designed to be answered by users finding your site, then completing your survey. It also presumes you have developed far enough to have a
Minimum Viable Product. This questionnaire might give you some early answers to your product.
The Best (insert your product name here) Survey
Question 1. How did you discover The Best Web 2.0 App?
- Blog
- Friend or colleague
- Search engine (e.g. Google, Yahoo)
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Other (please specify)
Question 2. How would feel if you could not longer use The Best Web 2.0 app?
- Very disappointed
- somewhat disappointed
- not disappointed
- Not disappointed (it really isn't that useful)
- N/A - I no longer use the Best Web 2.0 APP
Please help us understand why you selected your answer.
Question 3.What would you likely use as an alternative if The Best Web 2.0 App were no longer available?
I probably wouldn’t use an alternative
I would use....
Question 4.What is the primary benefit that you have received from The Best Web 2.0 App?
Question 5.Have you recommended The Best Web 2.0 App to anyone?
No
Yes (Please explain how you described it)
Question 6. What type of person do you think would benefit most from The Best Web 2.0 App?
Question 7. How can we improve The Best Web 2.0 App to better meet your needs?
Question 8. Would it be okay if we followed up by email to request a clarification to one or more of your responses?
No
Yes (please enter the best email address to contact you by)
End of survey
Escapethecity.org empower people to quite their 9-5 job and do something totally different. They are a new website and are trying to narrow down their function on the internet. Some of the feedback questions they ask are as follows:
Question) What one thing would you like Escape the City to personally be able to help you with?
Question) What is the one big challenge or question you are currently wrestling with which a community like Escape the City might be able to help you with?
Question) What specific information, tools, or features would you like to see on Escape the City?
Esc.org is a work in progress. We will succeed if what we build actually works for our members... so, tell us, what would you like the platform to do for you?
Question) Anything else you would like to get in touch with us about? Any help v. much appreciated
Eg: Suggest inspirational people to interview, recommend relevant information / websites / books, introduce us to exciting organisations with Escape Opportunities.... etc.
Voting
A system used by many fledgling and evolving websites alike is to have a voting system for product improvement/features, the more votes the more likely the founders are to implement the request. Not only that, the users gain a community feel by a common voice with people of the same idea that is listened to by the websites, which in-turn gains them brand value. This service is dominated by getsatisfaction.com, who provide a discrete feedback tab to the side of your website.
You know when you are onto a good thing when people you tell, say "cool, that is a great idea" But you are still not done yet. It could be literally “cool” to have an idea and implement it, but if the product stinks, this feedback still has not helped you. When you have people willing to pay money for your product, you are onto the right thing. When friends use your prototype website, you are onto a good thing. So what if people don’t get it and it does not solve a problem?
Disruption
One phase I will quote from James Caan which seems highly appropriate to this article is “I have always believed in observing the masses and doing the opposite”. So when you are providing a product which is the opposite to the competition you could also be onto to something. However the statement also has a caveat in that you should observe the competition, which means at least take into consideration what they are doing and analyse it. The phrase also does not mean sell all your gold as the market starts to rise sharply and the masses buy more. I would interpret this along with caution and not do the polar opposite but find the niche and method for doing something slightly different, but different enough. For example:
- selling something to a foreign country that has not got those goods or services
- or using the internet to sell something that has never been traded online before (method)
- or sending goods in the post that overcomes a geographical restriction (logistics) in the past
- or trying to change the opinion of consumers about a product to bring it back into fashion (trend)
- or creating a whole new product (innovation).
- Changing the product's value such as Budget no-frills airlines
- Create massive disruption by making something for free, think Napster.com!
All of these methods are proven ways to change something enough to generate a business.
If people just don’t understand your product then the chances are you are not providing a solution to a problem, because the problem does not exist (yet). In other words you could be creating a whole new market or niche in your sector, whereby you have invented something people never knew they wanted? This is true inspiration and has many elements of risk. many ideas are generated by trying to problem-solve a known problem.
Publish your survey - but where?
I have tried searching for online places for surveys and have found one. I came across many such as surveymonkey and getsatisfaction which have varying price plans from free up-to enterprise accounts. The problem they all have is that they are all surveys in relation to an existing product or service and the invitation for the survey is to customers or people related to that company. If you are a start-up, with no blog, no followers, no minimum viable product website or email contact list, you have to find a group of people to sample. One possible answer is to ask strangers and ideally to narrow down this group of people to potential customers or those that have knowledge of the sector you are entering. If the people are random strangers, you may have unreliable results. The website that I came across to ask a single question to is called
ask500people.com.
The website is firstly a community where people ask questions about stuff they find interesting such as which Michael Jackson photo is better, or which photo of a girl is hotter.... However they offer a Business question section, where you pay increasing amounts with the amount of responses up to 1000. I used the free service which provided me with 15 responses which did not give me the result I was hoping for, so I have currently parked the result as inconclusive because the sample size was tiny, and it was from random strangers who may have clicked on 1 of my 4 results because that is what they have heard. I am looking to validate the same questionnaire but overcoming these observations. After all you questionnaire is only as useful as the questions you ask. It is an iterative process of getting target market right, then validating your questionnaire, to find out if are you asking the correct questions?
I am now planning to trial a survey of 10 questions based on the basic question template listed above from survery.io. I plan to use the website AYTR.com (ask your target market) to ask the survey to a sample size of 100. I have included a pre-requisite question at the start of the questionnaire and because my start-up idea is web-based, it simply asks if you have a Facebook account. If the recipient answers no, they cannot complete the question and do not count. The answers have come at a reasonable price of $175 (£106) and the panel is completely US based recipients. However I am trying to establish whether my idea will work not who my demographic target market is.
You could use Facebook Polls or Yahoo answers. But I find Yahoo answers deletes questions very easily because their guidelines are so tight. As for Facebook Polls, this is a new feature which I have not experimented with and I would guess the content for the poll needs to be engaging to your audience (your friends).
As for asking the right questions, I still believe a customised questionnaire based on the survery.io questionnaire I quoted above is a good starting point. Although this is written as a feedback questionnaire to be embedded into your website, you can get round this by explaining the context of your idea first. This has been well-thought out as a template with skip answer logic and you can customise it to explain the who why, what, when and how of your idea, or better yet, you can write it so that your users can tell you that.
During the weeks of thinking about this subject, I changed my efforts to learn more coding and develop a minimum viable website. However with the knowledge I have now, I can complete my market research chapter and send out my Business plan with more confidence. So with constant learning you change your viewpoint of priorities and therefore your actions. As long as you keep doing, you should eventually get there. Please feel free to comment below or contact me
@iamandywright
Free resources that are straight to the point and saves reading a whole book:
For further reading this I recommend this Frankly written White Paper provided by aytm.com.
http://aytm.com/press/WhitePapers/MarketResearch_101_for_Startups.pdf
Shell-livewire.org have written a paper on doing Market research for the fist time.
http://www.shell-livewire.org/store/1291025975.080LID0.pdf
