How to get the right product or service specification as a startup founder

 

The phrase how a new company can prescribe the correct product or service specification sounds pedantic, but now I'm going to give an even more shocking answer, which is "No prescribing at all!"

Recently received two sets of demands from Africa, one said to make mobile phones, 30 per month, and the other said that they wanted mobile phone chargers, and the demand would fall between 10,000 ~ 100,000 pieces -> Have you seen the problem with these two groups of people?

Their common problem is that they have very little understanding of the market, market research is done indiscriminately, and I reasonably speculate that there are no customers at all. This is the reason they do not even know the MOQ of the mobile phones, the specifications, and target price of the mobile phone charger.

So what is the correct way to do it? If you have read the book Lean Startup, there should be some logic, but the book Lean Startup only mentions logic and has no corresponding tools, so Ash, a serial entrepreneur who advocated lean entrepreneurship later, another book was released, called "Lean Execution", if you are interested, you can find it yourself.

Back to the point, how to research the market without the specifications? Honestly there are only two ways, direct interviews with customers face-to-face, or online observation of the market.

Taking hardware as an example, if it is to introduce an existing product into a new market, the easiest way is to:

1. Buy someone else's finished product, then erase the logo, or get a white brand directly from the factory

2. Take it to the customer, spread it on the table and say, "These are my company's products, which ones do you want?"

3. The customer chooses a few models and goes back to try them out. If it goes well, they will say which one they want. Can't you go back to the supplier to make the precise demand?

If it is a new product, then you should be very careful (the following steps are not in order, because there is no order, but go through them all, there should be a clear answer):

1. First draw a few Lean Canvas briefly and show it to yourself. Simple example link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nW9lg-fenY

2. Start looking for people to interview -> If the attitude of the interviewee at this time is, "Okay, okay, great!" but you can not make an appointment with them for a follow-up meeting, then this means you are about 80 ~ 90% out of the game. This indicates that your assumptions are likely to be built on a hype. 

3. If there is a problem with the assumption, it is very likely that the problem is not detailed enough. For example: you want to date a person of the opposite sex and go to Hualien and Taitung to play for three days and two nights. In fact, there are many super invincible assumptions in the middle. 

For example: you assume that the other party wants to date with you, you assume that the other party will like the tour you arranged, you assume that the other party will be satisfied with the route and transportation you have arranged, etc., there are so many super invincible assumptions.

4. Turn these assumptions into true-false questions one by one, so that people can easily answer them, and in the interview, dig out more psychological information of the other party.

5. According to the logic of Xiaomi's product managers to develop products, it is to meet 80% of the needs of 80% of the customer base. According to the experiences, there will be less than 5 functions selected by this logic.

6. Take these filtered functions and go back to find potential customers who are willing to answer your question. At the same time, study the functions and more important prices of all competing products.

7. Ask the customer: "I have the same function as XXX now, but it is 10 USD cheaper. Do you want to buy it?" 

Or: "I have three more functions than XXX, and only 10 USD more than the other party. Do you want to buy it?"

8. Ideally, there is an order, and then go back to the supplier to produce, but it is not so good most of time, but at least you can get some feedback, and then make the next stage of MVP, you can continue to go back and forth until the order is received.

The best example is Oliver, a football IoT start-up that I have invested in before. They found the second army of the professional team, and worked with them to develop products and services. After polishing it to a large scale, they raised a sum of money to hit the 2C market. .

Therefore, in theory, there is no problem of making specifications for new innovations. According to the pain points of customers, you can go back and find the public version of the supplier and put them in one by one, and the product is basically finished (add at most a few features that the vendor can provide and that the customer considers necessary), where does the spec problem come from?