How do I start?

If my days at Apple as a Creative have taught me anything, it's the value of sitting on your hands and listening.

Sit on your hands. Listen.

The urge to code might be overwhelming, but I assure you that it is precisely the wrong path to take. You could spend 10 years building a product that, it turns out, only a few people find valuable. Luckily, IH is filled with smart people that will happily show you how to perform early market research.

Don't be that guy who's built a solution in search of a problem.

Imagine a Dev acquaintance of yours is looking to raise $200k to build a V1.0 of her product. What advice would you give her? What questions would you ask her to reduce her risk of execution?

1. How do you know you're building something people want?
2. Who are these people? Are they decision-makers? How much would they spend to solve this issue?
3. How large is this group of people?
4. What solutions are they using now to solve this problem?
5. Why is building this solution valuable to you, your customers, investors?
6. What's involved in selling your product? How expensive is it to onboard customers?
7. How profitable could this venture be?
   etc. etc.

There's no shortage of high-value questions on IH and I highly suggest you dive deep into this problem space before coding.

A lumberjack doesn't chop an entire forest before lining up potential buyers for his wood. That would be silly and wasteful, wouldn't it?

Enlightened lumberjacks sell their wood before grabbing the axe, guaranteeing a certain financial outcome.

Find your buyers > confirm their desires > capture intent ($) > solidify your product strategy > start building with cash earned as evidence of your being on track.

If you doubt that this is the correct way forward, let me ask you, how much would FedEx pay upfront for a commercial teleportation device?

Kickstarter, pre-orders, concert ticket sales, etc. etc. are all clear evidence that humans are always willing to pay a certain amount upfront to guarantee the supply of things they value.

Be the guy who is supplying something people value :)

I suggest you find your first customer. Do the most actionable and valuable thing upfront: Pitch your product to someone, who you think would be a potential customer.

What does that person think of your product? Is he/she willing to put money on the table for it? How do you have to convinced them?

Find that decision maker (or even just relevant employee) in that bank, telecom operator, and tech company. Then pitch.

I have built a product that ended up being used by telecom companies. I've been writing about my experiences here on IH. Things like how I spent months building to no-one.

My advices?

• It's not easy to sell to big corps.
• Relationships in those companies may help a lot.
• I wouldn't start building everything before selling.
• If you arrange some meetings to run demos, some companies are ok to listen to you even with a prototype (hence my suggestion to focus on relationship).
• Sales process might take months.
• But once you're in, you have big chances to sell more.

I'm happy to discuss more

Can you go into more details, For instance:

1. Why do you think you're solving a problem?
2. Have you seen someone experience this problem first-hand?
3. How often do you see this problem?

Depending on how well you know the problem, some or all of this advice is applicable.

Hi Said,

I guess you get the point everyone here has made: Put your customer first. I particularly like @daveandreu comment: "Sit on your hands. Listen". Not diving into the technology is one of the hardest things to do as an software developer. And you'll be tempted multiple times in your journey to forget the customer and start working on that solution you have in your head.

There's a massive motivational chunk that many here at IH will have lost at one point or another. Communities can help keep you focused (although my experience is that they also get excited about the technology) and prevent you stray from the customer-focus path!

You might very well have the next multi-milion dollar startup in your mind, but the statistics make that somewhat improbable :-). Many of the big business started incredibly small, chose out a specific niche and targeted a specific problem. They grew big by expanding on this. The value usually doesn't lie in the idea; it lies in the journey where you learn more about your customers and their problems.

But even if you don't want to share your idea, you can already get started. Reach out to your customers and ask them what keeps them up at night. Where they need help. Like this you can confirm whether the problem really exists and if it's strong enough. Without ever revealing your solution. The common reality shows that these solutions change a lot over time because of your learnings with customers.

Instead of joining a community, I'm building my startup to accelerate other entrepreneurs in their idea validation. I focus a lot on keeping you focused on that customer and to keep you motivated, even when a customer just destroyed your idea (we've all been there...). If you'd like to alpha test it, check it out :-) validator.phalox.be

Suppose you have your product built now. ready to sell, how do you sell it? Start there.

UI is easy to build. Whatever you can think of, someone or you can make it. There is 0 uncertainty about that.

But, you don't what to spend 2 years building it then thinking about the question, "how do I sell it"?

This is my Startup check List,

1. Find a problem to solve  which resonates with you.

2. Validate the problem and ensure that there is enough need gap.

3. Visualise a cost-effective solution which solves that problem. You would now have a startup idea.

4. The solution should be good enough for the people who face that problem(2.), so that they are willing to pay for that to get their problem solved. You would now have a business model.

5. Validate the startup idea with those who face that problem(2.).

6. Calculate and raise the appropriate capital for your startup.

7. Build a right team to create the solution i.e. product.

8. Find the product-market fit  with a Minimum Viable Product.

9. Long term sustainability of your problem now depends upon how large is the need gap, how good your product solves that problem and how it fares when compared to the solutions offered by your competitors. So, you need to build on your solution according to the market demands. You would now have a product strategy.

10. Find the people who face the problem which your startup solves and sell your product to them. You would now have a marketing & sales strategy.

Here is what I would do:

1. read The Mom Test
2. find customers and talk to them. Make sure the problem you are trying to solve exists and they are ready to pay for it
3. Build a landing page and pitch the idea (based on feedback from #2) + collect emails to measure interest
4. Build MVP, share it with people from #2 & #3.
5. use the feedback to pivot or persevere

Don't build the mocked version.
Don't build the real version.
Think as if you have developed the product completely and you now have to sell it to those very large corporations (banks, telecom operators, tech companies). Think how will you reach them, once you have figured it out. Go ahead and actually reach them. Tell them about the product. Tell the problem it solves. Tell the time it saves them. Tell the price. No need to send out a link to your product (Since the product doesn't even exists for now😜). Let them reply back asking for it. Gauge their interest. Then tell them it will be live in a month or two. Talk with them about the features and product that you are planning to build in detail. Do this with a few people and you will have a better idea of how exactly to build & present your idea. Plus you get early users for the product & know a bit on how to sell to your target audience.

Hey @Mipmop. This is a great question. I would start by finding out what the problem is that your 'market' (ideal customers) are experiencing. I think as you do this and read some of the best practises from the Mom Test, as @rosiesherry suggested, you'll be able to gauge what the problem these banks, telecom operators, tech companies are facing in relation to your product/service area.

I also made a cheat sheet based on The Mom Test that you can see here. You might find it useful.

As you gather data from the market, you can start building your landing page in tandem in order to begin testing your hypotheses and see if anyone else is interested in what you are offering.

Continue posting here on IH and other places about your process and document your journey. Use this as a means of kickstarting your content marketing and you'll build up an audience over time.

If you do want to make a prototype at some point, you may code the back-end as usual and use a no-code app builder like AppGyver for the front-end.

I would start by listening to this Mom Test podcast episode, and then perhaps read the book too.

I would start with putting together a pitch deck and speaking to a few potential customers you have in mind, get as much feedback as possible before you start building.

Focus on, and crave for feedback and hearing out ideas, it can prove/disprove assumptions made and how you perceive product/market fit for your startup.

Hey Aspen, I'd start with the landing page to gauge interest and try to generate a list that would like early access. You could then get feedback on to those interested and figure out if you're on the right track.