#1 How to create a product that sells – building a product to meet the needs of the consumer | Podcast Startup Starter

In this episode you will hear about:

• entering the market with innovation
• planning work on a product in a startup, including budget planning
• executing a business model while maintaining agility and flexibility
• product validation and pivots

Should we wait to go to market until our product is ready? Our expert feels that we live in the times of unfinished products and in the case of a startup it is worth consulting at least the so-called early adopters to check what works in our product and what does not, and in which direction we should develop it.

It is impossible to predict whether the world needs our innovation without testing and validation with the target market. This, however, makes us showcase our product at an early stage of its development. Our expert believes that this is not a problem, on the contrary, we are probably not the only team in the world trying to solve a given issue, and the sooner we show the world that we can do it, the better for our business.

Looking from the production side, the strategy of our startup should be built on business values and goals that we want to achieve, rather than product functionalities. This approach systematises the work on the project, allows us to prioritise individual tasks and shows where we are going, we don’t need to know how we will get there. According to our expert, building a very detailed strategy is often a waste of time, because during the verification and testing it may turn out that there should be changes in our plans.

The pivot

In business it is often a complete revolution. The problem for startups is believing in and being attached to their idea, without at the same time paying attention to clear signals and needs for change. Blindly following your idea can end in failure and wasted capital.

How to plan a budget for the development of a startup, in order to remain flexible and ready for pivots at all times? First of all, you need to be prepared for the fact that changes will simply happen. It is good to divide the project into small steps, instead of building a huge plan, and after each small step verify our final vision – i.e. build an MVP to see if it is worth going in this direction at all, because after a while it may turn out that any change will be very expensive for us. Numerous tools are already available that can help us with this – not so much in creating a real product, but its equivalent and verifying its usability (such as User Story Mapping).

A startup is usually not an institution that has unlimited financial resources, so it is worth keeping flexibility in building a product to limit the risk of wasting them. Agile methodologies, although they are mainly associated with the production of software, are suitable for all types of projects. This is because so-called agile assumes that we have a plan, but this plan can change, and what’s more there is nothing wrong with that.

However, there is no single recipe for a unicorn. Michal Dusiński states: “test and discover”. Startups are not about manufacturing, but about discovering and creating solutions to real problems.

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Do you run a startup? Do you want to develop your business, are you looking for knowledge, inspiration and expert advice to prepare for the next challenges? Startup Starter will answer these questions. Podcasts will be published every Thursday from April 15th.