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MenuWhat product should I build?
I'm a Ruby / Javascript developer and I've built and sold a moderately successful SaaS. Last time, I started by building a product and then looked for the market. This time, I'd like to validate demand and then build the product. Preferably something outside the education market. Ready for the next move.
Answers
You can only solve a big problem that changes the world if you solve a problem that is deeply personal to you.
Two great examples and why they worked:
Roy Raymond was a sad pervert. He'd buy bras and panties at the department store and all the clerks thought their thoughts about him.
Roy felt embarrassed. He wasn't really a pervert. He just wanted to buy lingerie for his girlfriend.
So he solved this major problem he was having. He created a space where men could feel comfortable coming in and buying sexy lingerie for their partners. He called it Victoria's Secret.
But Roy, by solving this important personal issue for himself, apparently solved the same issue for many other men. First year sales were over $500,000 and he quickly opened up three more stores.
In 1982 he sold Victoria's Secret for one million dollars before trying multiple other businesses that ended up failing. One MILLION Dollars.
A decade later Victoria's Secret was worth over a billion dollars but Roy Raymund was nearly bankrupt and had missed the huge run-up in it's value.
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Picture New York City in the late 1800s on a rainy day. It was disgusting beyond belief.
150,000 horses transported people up and down the busy streets. Each of those horses, according to Super Freakonomics, dropped down about 15-30 pounds of manure. That's up to 4.5 million pounds of manure A DAY on the streets of NYC. And now imagine it raining.
Would you cross the street?
How long could this last? How long would the city survive without being infested with crap and all the diseases brought with it. What would happen as population of both men and horses increased?
Was someone working on inventing a gigantic manure scooper? How would this problem get solved?
It never got solved.
Instead, Henry Ford invented the assembly line to mass produce cars. Every horse lost their job. People began to drive cars. Manure problem solved.
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In both cases there is a common theme. Someone outside the industry solved a problem that was personal to them that then changed an industry forever.
Roy Raymund wasn't a fashion designer or a retailer. He worked in the marketing department of Vicks, which makes over the counter medications.
Henry Ford, I don't think, ever worked in the manure industry.
Instead, each person focused on a problem that was important to them. A problem that excited them at that moment in time. Raymund wanted to avoid being embarrassed in the future. Ford wanted an efficient way to make cars.
The ONLY way to change the world is to solve a problem that is important to YOU.
They had to choose themselves for success before they could save the world. Raymund had to convince himself that he didn't belong in the marketing department of a division of Procter & Gamble. He borrowed $80,000 and took the big risk of starting a business.
Ford had to survive numerous failures and bankruptcies in order to find a cheap way to make cars. He would abandon investors, people who supported him, and even companies named after him, in his quest to solve his problem in his own way.
Nobody gave them permission. And neither of them set out to change the world. They only wanted to solve a problem that was personally important to them.
It's unfortunate that often we forget that choosing ourselves is not something that happens once. It has to happen every single day.
Else we lose track of that core inside of us that solves problems and is able to share them in a way that makes the world a better place.
Ford forgot this and became obsessed with Jews. Ford is the only American that Hitler mentions in Mein Kampf: "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence...[from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions."
And what happened to our embarrassed marketing manager that has ignited the passions of men and women for the past 30 years?
Roy Raymund saw the value of Victoria's Secret jump from the one million he sold it for in 1982 to over a billion dollars a decade later.
He failed in business after business. He got divorced. Then at the age of 46, my age, he drove to Golden Gate Bridge, jumped off it and killed himself.
Before you can save the world you have to save yourself.
But you have to relentlessly do it every day.
Sometimes the train wakes me up at night and I feel scared. What will the world be like for my children? I won't always be able to help them. I don't even know if I do enough to help them now.
And then I remember. I'm alive for another day.
There is no right answer to what product you should build; that will be different from person-to-person, your passion, your skills etc.
Here is a quick list of ways to generate ideas:
1. Talk to a teacher (or figure out what you can train others to do!)
2. Interview people. Ask what are the top 3 things they are facing today that they'd LOVE someone to solve.
3. Find something massively popular and sell it better.
4. Piggyback off something massively popular by selling a side-product/service.
5. Craigslist for what people are wanting.
6. Check marketplaces (eBay, Amazon, Etsy) for what is hot.
7. Ask Friends/Family for what they would want.
8. Go to a coffee shop and do some recon with the locals.
9. Check out online, newspaper, and magazine ads
10. Look at successful crowdfunding campaigns and compare to what is unsuccessful. Check who their backers are, see what those creators backed, etc.
11. Find out on Google what people hate
12. Google "Business ideas"
13. What'd you do last weekend?
14. What did you buy in last week?
As for validating it, ask your target audience to buy it from you before you build. Until you have money in hand, you have not validated anything. Though you should proceed with caution, Reddit can be very powerful in doing this.
You've pretty much answered your own question. Go find a target market you believe has a problem you can solve, and interview them about it.
What can you fix for them that they value highly?
What would they jump up and down right now and say, "Absolutely I'd pay for that!" about?
Then kickstart the thing by taking orders.
A great place to start is by looking in the mirror. When you do, what do you see? (answer should be your first customer)
Build something that you feel passionate about! But where does that stem from..?
Well, ask yourself, what do you find yourself spending the majority of your day thinking about? Once you've answered that... now ask yourself how you could make it better or where do you find it currently lacking...
For us, we spend that vast majority of our day working with companies that we have a stake in. Naturally, each time we decided to develop a new product ourselves, we began to then focus our time developing tools that would make us more successful when working with our portfolio.
If you invest your time building something you find value in, then you will immediately receive a return on investment. From there, all you'd need to do is share you vision (or MVP) with extreme clarity to others... collect their feedback... and then tweak from there.
By crafting a well designed survey experience, youll not only collect actionable product information, but also develop a phenomenal qualified lead list of your initial paying customers!
Message me if you'd like to explore the process in more detail, Id be more than happy to walk through an exploration of answers.
That's an interesting question.
It's good that you asked and not just followed the gut feeling.
I have done both. Built something that I like and other products (WordPress plugins) based on some research or finding that somebody had a problem that needed solving.
Keep in mind whatever you pick you'll need to stick with it for at least 4-6 months to see some results. It also depends how much time you'll put into marketing to make it successful.
As I mentioned in my previous answers go to a local Startup Weekend event and look for potential ideas, co-founders, suppliers etc.
Ok to answer your question. Do some research in areas that you're most passionate about, research competition, find out how you can be better and different. Then create a STATIC site that shows what your app is going to be about.
Then go to potential clients (or attract them via ads) and ask for feedback....you can also ask them to pre-order....that will be a great validation.
And finally, make sure you feed you mind with good entrepreneurial content ( Mixergy, EO Fire, Smart Passive Income, Ask Altucher etc) so when the times get tough you'll be prepared.
Slavi,
qSandbox
To run VueJS code in the Rails application, we need to install Webpack which is a static module bundler. The problem is that Babel does not have the correct preset to understand the JSX syntax with VueJS. If you restart the Webpack server and reload the page, you should see your first component. Vuex is a VueJS library that enables us to share the state of the application between all the Vue instances and components that use it. Vuex resolves this problem centralizing the application data.
You can read more here: https://nebulab.it/blog/build-rails-application-vuejs-using-jsx/
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath
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How can I manage my developers' performance if I don't understand IT?
Whenever you assign them a task, break down the task into small chunks. Make the chunks as small as you can (within reason, and to the extent that your knowledge allows), and tell your devs that if any chunks seem large, that they should further break those chunks down into bite size pieces. For instance, for the overall task of making a new webpage, _you_ might break it down as follows: 1) Set up a database 2) Make a form that takes user email, name, and phone number and adds them to database 3) Have our site send an email to everyone above the age of 50 each week When your devs take a look at it, _they_ might further break down the third step into: A) Set up an email service B) Connect it to the client database C) Figure out how to query the database for certain users D) Have it send emails to users over 50 You can keep using Asana, or you could use something like Trello which might make more sense for a small company, and might be easier to understand and track by yourself. In Trello you'd set up 4 columns titled, "To Do", "Doing", "Ready for Review", "Approved" (or combine the last two into "Done") You might want to tell them to only have tasks in the "Doing" column if they/re actually sitting at their desk working on it. For instance: not to leave a task in "Doing" overnight after work. That way you can actually see what they're working on and how long it takes, but that might be overly micro-manager-y At the end of each day / week when you review the tasks completed, look for ones that took a longer time than average (since, on average, all the tasks should be broken down into sub-tasks of approximately the same difficulty). Ask them about those tasks and why they took longer to do. It may be because they neglected to further break it down into chunks as you had asked (in which case you ask them to do that next time), or it may be that some unexpected snag came up, or it may be a hard task that can't be further broken down. In any case, listen to their explanation and you should be able to tell if it sounds reasonable, and if it sounds fishy, google the problem they say they encountered. You'll be able to get a better feel of their work ethic and honesty by how they answer the question, without worrying as much about what their actual words are. Make sure that when you ask for more details about why a task took longer, you don't do it in a probing way. Make sure they understand that you're doing it for your own learning and to help predict and properly plan future timelines.LV
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For a SaaS, I find that Stripe is not available to Indian companies. What are other Stripe-like payment gateway options for Indian companies?
there is Balanced, Dwolla, Braintree but none of them seem to work in India yet.HJ
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How should we plan a well-executed SaaS product launch to an existing customer base?
I'm a product developer, startup veteran, and advisor to SaaS companies. Hopefully you've been already developing this new product with input from your existing customers, letting them beta test it and give feedback. (If not, my advice is to STOP immediately and get enough pilot customers involved to be sure that you're delivering something really valuable to them, that works the way they expect it to work, is easy to understand and get started with, etc.. The last thing you want is to do a big splashy launch of a product that is D.O.A. because you built what you assumed the customers wanted instead of they actually demonstrated that they wanted.) OK, so let's assume that you've got customers in the loop. Interview the heck out of them. Really understand how they use the product, why they use the product, what makes it valuable to them, what they can do with it that they couldn't do before, etc. If the product's not done enough for them to be best testing it yet and getting results, at least get some insights into how they see themselves getting results from it. How does it/will it change their lives? As you do this, be on the lookout for things that really resonate. Emotional language, for example. "It's such a relief that I don't have to worry about sending invoices manually anymore." (or whatever pain it is that your software solves) Also look for (and try to elicit) specific result statements: "This new software saves me [or is going to save me] 15 hours a week. Now I can spend that time where I really want to, with my kids ( ... my cat ... my golf buddies ... )" You're doing this for three reasons: 1) This stuff makes for phenomenal testimonials; 2) it helps you come up with great ideas for pre-launch content; and 3) it generates *PURE SOLD GOLD* you'll use in writing the copy for your launch offer. OK, launch mechanics. There are people who teach huge long expensive courses on this stuff. I'll give you the Cliff's notes. While I haven't personally run a major product launch, I have been trained in the strategy and am very familiar with it. - Plan your launch period in advance. You might want to do a pre-launch sequence that lasts 1, 2, even 3 months depending on the magnitude of your product and how much effort you're willing to put into creating content for the launch. - Create some teaser content of interest to your customers who might want to buy this product. Offer to teach them something, or offer to give them a sneak-peak behind-the-scenes of your new product. - Send an enticing offer for this content out to your list. Get people who are interested in this content to sign up for it. This creates your launch email list. - Send your launch list weekly updates: development milestones, sneak-peak screenshots, videos, educational material, interviews with/testimonials from beta users, and so on. - You're not trying to sell here yet (not hard sell at least). Drop some hints that there is going to be a special offer when the product launches, just for special loyal customers like them. - Create at least three videos on topics that are really, really interesting to your prospective customers... not necessarily about your new product itself, but teach them about what they can achieve with it, or what others have achieved with it already. As you publish these videos, send the link out to your launch list. - Also send out an offer to see these videos to your main list, to entice more people to sign up for your launch list. - As you get closer to launch time, keep sending frequent updates to the pre-launch list, and send another email out to your main list to let them know that the product is launching soon, and that if they're interested in the special one-time-only launch pricing, they need to sign up for the "early bird list" (your launch list). - Send out a 24-hour notice that the launch is going to happen soon, and the launch pricing will only be available for a limited time (potentially, to a limited number of customers ... to increase scarcity and urgency). - I recommend that even if you plan to open the product up to all your customers that at launch time you limit it to a smaller number. This makes the inevitable post-launch gremlins less painful to deal with because you have fewer customers, and it motivates people to buy because they fear that they'll lose the opportunity to do so. You can open the product up to more people later... the delay will result in pent-up demand and easier sales. - Start the launch. Tell your early-bird launch list a few hours early, then tell your main list. Direct them to a web page with a video and long-form sales copy of your launch offer. - Send out 2-day, 1-day, 12-hour, etc. notices that the launch is ending soon and reminding people what they're missing out on if they don't act now. If you're offering a limited number of spots, tell people what percentage has already sold out. Remind people that if they're "on the fence" about this, that this is the time to make a decision. - Send out an email letting people know that the launch is over and thanking them for their support and their vote of confidence. Tell the people who didn't buy (or didn't get in) that you'll let them know that the product will be opening up for new registrations some time in the future. (You may get people sending you emails begging to be let in at this point, if your product is desirable and your marketing was executed well.) And, of course, you don't just have to promote your launch content to your existing customer list ... you can post it to social media (and encourage your customers to do so) to attract brand new customers into your world. If you'd like to go into more detail about launch planning for your specific product and market, I'd be happy to jump on a call and talk about ways to make this work for you.BB
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