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So you're skipping a few steps but I think you have a good chance of avoiding wantrepreneur land... your post is a good start. TLDR; Custom > Service > Customi
by jppope 7y ago
So you're skipping a few steps but I think you have a good chance of avoiding wantrepreneur land... your post is a good start.
TLDR; Custom > Service > Customized Product > product
Longer version with steps:
1) find a problem
2) find someone that needs that problem solved, solve it for them
3) find someone else that has a similar problem, use some of the stuff from problem solve #1 to make this build faster, but build new stuff that the person from problem #1 might want to buy
4) Sell person #1 the stuff from build #2
5) now you have some things that you can try to sell to other people, it will probably require some customization, but you'll start to get the core of your future product in each build
6) after few more customers you basically have your product, you just need to polish it and then take everything you've learned to find more people that resemble the people you just sold to to go find more people.
7) you no longer need any advice from anyone, you are busy selling your product
- d--b 7y agoOh wow, i had never read anything like this advice. Did you apply this yourself? If the problem I found requires a fair amount of time to solve for person 1, do you have any advice to avoid making something that only caters to that person and that’s not extensible to person #2?
- jppope 7y agoI've worked for myself a couple of times, where I get to various degrees through the process... I've typically found a sweet spot with doing custom work that has proprietary code that I can apply towards new clients... the work tends to be more interesting for me. It might also be worth mentioning that product ownership isn't intrinsically better than providing a service if you have your business model honed really well. We tend to promote that bigger is always better and that scale is the only way to make money... neither are inherently true. ... but the above comment I was putting forward is based on the team from Basecamp and my business mentors. Regarding your question: The process takes balance and focus. Arguably, a harder part is customer selection to find the right client to help you with both your short term and long term goals.
- clay_the_ripper 7y agoI would like to second this as great advice. I built my company exactly this way. Ended up doing something completely different than what I originally did, but that’s how it seems to go. The best way to start a business is to start one: get a customer and solve a problem for them. The best way I’ve found to get customers is to call your friends, past coworkers etc. since you’re early on, it’s harder to get strangers to trust you. I had no luck early on trying to find customers online, picking up the phone and connecting with people is the best way. I still get customers that way and do bacially no advertising or marketing.