The Party of Four
The way that I see it, in a start-up, the most important thing are the products. Of course, I’m slightly biased.
Yes, you need to have a “grander” vision. A good handle on the broader scope of things and the bigger picture.
However, I like to think of each product as it’s own mini-business. When constructing and shaping the idea of one, you need to toss out the idea of the business vision, and work solely on the product vision. Of course, trust that the idea or innovation fits into the bigger scheme of things first. If it doesn’t maybe the idea has to be refined or tossed.
OK, ok. So say you’re past all that. What next? This leads to the title of the post — there are four things that I’ve found are a great way to get started on the foundations of the product itself.
I’ll walk through each of the four.
Problem?
Straight-up. What is the problem the product is trying to solve? If this can’t be defined, maybe the product idea needs to be revisited before proceeding.
Vision
What is the grander scheme of the product? A vision is 100% critical because it gives you perspective moving forward. Competitive decisions, feature choices, even priorities. All these choices can be a direct reflection of the vision. Is there something that can’t be decided? Go back to the vision. Does it fit the vision?
If not, chuck it. It it does, get it in there.
Market Segments
So what’s the other really important thing before writing a stitch of code? Deciding who the hell the code is being written for. If that’s not known, then how can features and priorities be decided upon?
I’ve found that there is a key difference here when building consumer products to business products. The segments for a business product can be a lot more broad as opposed to consumer, which tend to need to be more specific. Why is this? I think it’s because with consumer markets you’re dealing a TON more users that need to be pleased, in most cases.
I don’t believe this is hard & fast, but just lessons learned thus far.
User Goals
So once the market segments are decided upon, the goals the segments are worked toward when using the product need to be identified, so they can actually be reached.
I don’t think any of these can be ignored. They must be kept in front of everyone building and running toward the finish line together. One-page with bullet points outlining these things that are going to make the product a success. I think I’ll have more to write on this, but it has been a long week…
