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TBH I've created so many things over the years I've learnt my lesson. Now, I always start with a marketing plan: * Who's your target market, and how big is it

TBH I've created so many things over the years I've learnt my lesson. Now, I always start with a marketing plan: * Who's your target market, and how big is it and what are they likely to pay? * What do they want? * How will you create value you can capture? * How will you reach them? * What's the competition? If you can't answer these or don't get decent answers, bin it and move on. It's easy as an engineer to build stuff, but if you build it, they probably won't come, so you might as well work out whether you're wasting your time in advance instead of at the end.

linkdd 6y ago
Same except I don't bin it, I put it in the "projects for fun" box. NB: "What's the competition" is a very hard question when you're trying to innovate.
- klausjensen 6y ago
  There are generally three reasons for not having competitors: 1. You're blind to what you're competing against. 2. It's not a problem worth solving. 3. You're genuinely innovating, creating a whole new category, which you're the first to ever think of. Number 1 and 2 are extremely common. 3 is extremely rare.
  - linkdd 6y ago
    This is exactly why it's a hard question to answer. Innovation is not always "new problems to solve", but more often "new clever ways to solve a problem", which rules out number 2 IMHO. For example, Kubernetes was an innovation in the cluster management field where many had already solved that problem with other means, and many still do today. When you're trying to innovate, it's easy to fall in number 1 (being blind to the competition: current means to solve the problem).
jasfi 6y ago
What your target market wants is not that easy to determine. I've heard the book "The Mom Test" is a good read to help with this. I've started reading it recently.
- tr1ll10nb1ll 6y ago
  I've tried it as well, it does seem to work as a good indicator to validate that you're going in the right direction initially. But like any good finding, needs a large sample size, so I decided to talk to more people about the same product I'm building. Now, I'm thinking of a way to help others (users on my platform) do the same with their products without those surveys, people don't usually fill out surveys and are more receptive to conversations from my experience. Guess, I'll figure something out eventually.
- anchit_rana 5y ago
  People never know what they want untill it's shown to them, show it to them and they want it. That's the plan Steve jobs followed and his company is still succeeding.

linkdd 6y ago

Same except I don't bin it, I put it in the "projects for fun" box. NB: "What's the competition" is a very hard question when you're trying to innovate.

klausjensen 6y ago
There are generally three reasons for not having competitors: 1. You're blind to what you're competing against. 2. It's not a problem worth solving. 3. You're genuinely innovating, creating a whole new category, which you're the first to ever think of. Number 1 and 2 are extremely common. 3 is extremely rare.
- linkdd 6y ago
  This is exactly why it's a hard question to answer. Innovation is not always "new problems to solve", but more often "new clever ways to solve a problem", which rules out number 2 IMHO. For example, Kubernetes was an innovation in the cluster management field where many had already solved that problem with other means, and many still do today. When you're trying to innovate, it's easy to fall in number 1 (being blind to the competition: current means to solve the problem).

jasfi 6y ago

What your target market wants is not that easy to determine. I've heard the book "The Mom Test" is a good read to help with this. I've started reading it recently.

tr1ll10nb1ll 6y ago
I've tried it as well, it does seem to work as a good indicator to validate that you're going in the right direction initially. But like any good finding, needs a large sample size, so I decided to talk to more people about the same product I'm building. Now, I'm thinking of a way to help others (users on my platform) do the same with their products without those surveys, people don't usually fill out surveys and are more receptive to conversations from my experience. Guess, I'll figure something out eventually.
anchit_rana 5y ago
People never know what they want untill it's shown to them, show it to them and they want it. That's the plan Steve jobs followed and his company is still succeeding.