Many entrepreneurs, business owners, executives are investing a lot of time, effort and money on designing and building products and services that have a high chance of failing. In fact, global statistics indicate that more than nine out of ten start-ups fail.
Base on my research, constructing a minimum viable product necessitates :
Financial investment : $10 000 to $150 000 (*)
Time investment : 4 to 16 weeks (*)
Hence, these resources would be wasted if devoted to the WRONG IDEA.
At the early stage of every venture, you should have only one objective on mind :
Is there a market interest in my product or service ?
The best way to find an answer is to START SELLING YOUR IDEA !
You are wondering right now : How I’m supposed to sell something I didn’t build yet ?
Let's explore how, through the story of Zappos.com, an online marketplace for shoes and clothing that was acquired by Amazon for over 1 billion dollars.
Zappos' founder, Nick Swinmurn, went shoe shopping for a pair of Airwalk Desert boots. He found the desired color but not the right size, and vice versa.
Nick decided to test the assumption that people would be willing to buy shoes online without trying them on.
Instead of creating an inventory and attempting to sell it, Nick adopted a different approach. He visited local stores, took photographs of shoes, and advertised them online. When a pair of shoes was sold, Nick would return to the store, purchase the shoe, and ship it to the customer.
This is a known idea validation technique called “Wizard of Oz”.
You present to the user an advanced technology or a system, while behind the scenes, a human performs the operations.
Founder Nick Swinmurn, along with Tony Hsieh and their team, spent weeks personally visiting shoe stores to purchase shoes ordered by users from their website. This process validated that users were indeed willing to buy shoes online, before investing significant time and resources into building the necessary infrastructure to support it.
So, the next time you have a big product idea, instead of immediately diving into building a complex system, consider finding a way to test it first. You can achieve this by utilizing a combination of a well-designed interface (such as a landing page or an Instagram page) and manual operations (like manual inventory and delivery). If you begin to see consistent interest and engagement from users, that's when you should proceed with the design and build process.
(*) Can vary greatly depending on the nature of the product and the industry