Suggestions to test new business ideas ?

vaizbunas

vaizbunas

fuckin with the big G
Aug 17, 2011
229
1
0
Wonderland
www.blow.me
I think most of you get these crazy ideas. But how do you test it if its gonna fit the market ? Will business really needs it ? ( I would )

Lets just say I wanna create something like Yelp, but better. Now I can create website and do marketing for it, this is going to be business to business type of shit. Now how can I find out if there's gonna be some potential in what I wanna do before investing time and money ? Would you create a pool ? Call few business and see if they are interested ? What about profit ?

Trowing shit at the wall and see if it sticks doesn't work here, will cost too much, at least for me now. I'm not balling to trow 50k just to test shit out.

Thanks for your time and nagging :)
 


Go by the book: [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Nail-then-Scale-Entrepreneurs-Breakthrough/dp/0983723605]Nail It then Scale It: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation: Nathan Furr, Paul Ahlstrom: 9780983723608: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]

In short - build a quick and cheap prototype and talk to your potential customers about it, and you'll learn tons of stuff. Even if you draw your site in Excel you'll get feedback. However, there are many things to watch out for in this process, and it's a great book, so read it if you haven't yet.
 
You begin by analyzing your cost to start up. $50,000 is a broad figure. You need to break down your cost - Development cost, infrastructure costs, base feedbacks surveys, etc. These metrics will help you initialize your inward funding parameters such as cost to sign up, your packages on the site etc.

Then you setup some business parameters. The most important being Demand. Your idea maybe more complex, unique and relevant than the current market giants in your niche. However, if your potential target market doesn't want to buy it, you might as well donate the money you're going to invest in this.

Once you've sorted Demand - you begin to analyze Competition. You study -
  • What they are offering?
  • Where they have an edge over you?
  • What are their USPs?
  • What patents do they hold? (if applicable)
  • Where they are advertising?
  • What product owners have they collaborated with?
  • What technologies power them?
  • ...

Now, I believe that when you state the term - " like Yelp, but better" - being better would mean that the idea is something unique. You must have a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) attached to it. This USP will help you analyze the market.

You begin by analyzing your target customers. Define your customer-base. Identify the people you're going to list. Now it's time to go talk to them. Draw a random pool of a preset number of prospective clients and go and talk to them.

Get mockups prepared. Simple presentations created. Personalize the mockups for their business. Then show them how you're different from your competition. Sell them some emotions. Tell them your packages. Tell them how this would benefit their existing business threshold. And ask them if they would be interested in being signed on when the website launches. Let them sleep over it and talk to them one on one. Ask for their feedback on things that they'd really like to see.

Doing the above will help you get your hands on a lot of data - which you can further utilize to deduce a lot of answers.

  • Have you exposed a hole in your niche that can be exploited?
  • Is your price right?
  • Do you have the potential to turn over a profit?
  • What do customers want?
  • Are you satiating all of the existing customer requirements?
  • Is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) attractive enough?
  • ....

Using this data, you can decide if your idea is worth pursuing, or if you need to move the fuck on.

Good Luck Bros!
 
Business is way to hard. It will probably fail anyway, so you might as well save yourself the aggravation.
 
dzianis said:
Go by the book: Nail It then Scale It: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation: Nathan Furr, Paul Ahlstrom: 9780983723608: Amazon.com: Books

In short - build a quick and cheap prototype and talk to your potential customers about it, and you'll learn tons of stuff. Even if you draw your site in Excel you'll get feedback. However, there are many things to watch out for in this process, and it's a great book, so read it if you haven't yet.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the share,its NR1 on my list to read it.
BlogHue said:
You begin by analyzing your cost to start up. $50,000 is a broad figure. You need to break down your cost - Development cost, infrastructure costs, base feedbacks surveys, etc. These metrics will help you initialize your inward funding parameters such as cost to sign up, your packages on the site etc.

Then you setup some business parameters. The most important being Demand. Your idea maybe more complex, unique and relevant than the current market giants in your niche. However, if your potential target market doesn't want to buy it, you might as well donate the money you're going to invest in this.

Once you've sorted Demand - you begin to analyze Competition. You study -
  • What they are offering?
  • Where they have an edge over you?
  • What are their USPs?
  • What patents do they hold? (if applicable)
  • Where they are advertising?
  • What product owners have they collaborated with?
  • What technologies power them?
  • ...

Now, I believe that when you state the term - " like Yelp, but better" - being better would mean that the idea is something unique. You must have a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) attached to it. This USP will help you analyze the market.

You begin by analyzing your target customers. Define your customer-base. Identify the people you're going to list. Now it's time to go talk to them. Draw a random pool of a preset number of prospective clients and go and talk to them.

Get mockups prepared. Simple presentations created. Personalize the mockups for their business. Then show them how you're different from your competition. Sell them some emotions. Tell them your packages. Tell them how this would benefit their existing business threshold. And ask them if they would be interested in being signed on when the website launches. Let them sleep over it and talk to them one on one. Ask for their feedback on things that they'd really like to see.

Doing the above will help you get your hands on a lot of data - which you can further utilize to deduce a lot of answers.

  • Have you exposed a hole in your niche that can be exploited?
  • Is your price right?
  • Do you have the potential to turn over a profit?
  • What do customers want?
  • Are you satiating all of the existing customer requirements?
  • Is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) attractive enough?
  • ....

Using this data, you can decide if your idea is worth pursuing, or if you need to move the fuck on.

Good Luck Bros!
Click to expand...
I have did 60% of this already, analyzing competition and how would it fit, its broad, its not 1 niche, it takes over 75k business owners. Also, thinking to make a video and send out to different niches showing them what value have they been missing, would they like to work with us and receive these benefits and also ask question over the phone or offer them to meet, at least these 20-30 business owners so I can have some data to manipulate. I said yelp, cause could not find better example to use or something that would be close enough.

Thanks bro for such a helpful input, I bet same question will ask investors, gonna try to pitch this idea to bank with my 25% investment,getting ready business plan and shit if all these numbers will sound right in my head, will move on the next step.

What bothers atm is how to simplify things
dmnEPC said:
Business is way to hard. It will probably fail anyway, so you might as well save yourself the aggravation.
Click to expand...
Failing is the easy part, so I don't worry about it much :)
CCarter said:
Click to expand...
Yes, sir!
 
You are talking about idea validation.

I work from a startup incubator at least once a week. You would be fucking amazed at how little market research and idea validation is usually done before people commit to projects that take up to a year of their life.
 
Andrew Scherer said:
You are talking about idea validation.

I work from a startup incubator at least once a week. You would be fucking amazed at how little market research and idea validation is usually done before people commit to projects that take up to a year of their life.
Click to expand...

I'm not surprised, it's the same mentality used when people start a web project just because they think it's a great idea, or they will create a market for it instead of just entering an existing market. Sometimes you need that live wire/spark, but most of the time, people might want to think long term first.​
 
haha_business.jpg

business.jpg
 
Are you sure it will cost that amount of money to test? I try as hard as I can to replace start up costs with creativity as much as possible. Build the cheapest, most hacked-together test you can possibly do to get some real data as to how to proceed. Without knowing the full specifics of what you're looking to do it's hard to say, but there is always a way to do something cheaper and a more creative way to test it.
 
Sell your service to people before it's built.

If you can do that, you'll be a few steps ahead.
 
boatBurner said:
Sell your service to people before it's built.

If you can do that, you'll be a few steps ahead.
Click to expand...
I lost you there, sorry.

Andrew Scherer said:
You are talking about idea validation.

I work from a startup incubator at least once a week. You would be fucking amazed at how little market research and idea validation is usually done before people commit to projects that take up to a year of their life.
Click to expand...

I know,that's why most people fail. I have people asking to do ecom site. Sure, no problem. Before I jump into creating a site, always ask them, where's the traffic gonna come from ? Advertising budget ? Most of them have just idea, having a ecom will make money on auto pilot. Only ask this for people that come's from recommendations.

But this is much bigger ( I think so ) and way different from what I have done in the past. Its not just regular kw research and potential income calculation.

To be more clear, I have identified the need, its basic need that every business owner needs, who doesn't want make more sales ? Only thing is how will I pitch and how to simplify things. Simple things make people happy.

Thanks bros for your input! Any other input is welcome :)
 
Read THE LEAN STARTUP. It's not a bible, but it will give you some direction with regards to validating ideas with minimum models.
 
vaizbunas said:
I lost you there, sorry.
Click to expand...

Then allow me to find you.

1.) Identify your market, then trim it down

So you've got a web app idea and you want to market to business owners. But that's a broad designation, so let's trim it down. You want to market to boutique business owners in the Denver, CO area.

2.) Research

Learn about your customers and learn about your competitors. Don't worry about researching data trends like search, social, or content. I'm not saying that those aren't useful metrics, but they'll become irrelevant once you start talking to business owners. For now, know everything about your competitors and be able to talk shop with your customers.

3.) Get on the phone

By now, you've got a spreadsheet 100+ long of potential customers. Spend a week or so calling them. Here's a rough layout of your conversation:

  1. Introduce yourself as a startup company.
  2. Give them the elevator pitch.
  3. Tell them your product/service will be available to the public on [insert ETA].
  4. Invite them to subscribe to your service now, an offer only eligible for boutique business owners in the Denver, CO area.
  5. Give them the perks of adopting early. *
  6. Close the deal and/or setup a follow-on meeting.

* Just because you don't have a product or service created doesn't mean you can't offer something of value. Here are some ideas:

  • Be a voice in the development process and get the features you'd need.
  • Offer lifetime priority support for as long as they're a member.
  • Grandfathered pricing below the anticipated price tag for life.
  • Provide a secondary service, such as an SEO audit.
  • Offer the non-automated version of your service (if applicable). For example, if your service will generate monthly reports based on popularity metrics of boutique stores, provide it to them manually until the application is ready.
  • Offer them premium user features, like "priority business listing" for a month once the application launches.

A call center out here in Arizona calls households and businesses requesting donations for the Dept. of Transportation and Highway Patrol. Their callers sell business owners on giving them money for almost nothing in return. If you can't close a few business owners as early adopters, then your salesmanship sucks or your idea sucks.

If your salesmanship sucks, admit it and hire a biz dev guy. There's no way around it.

If your idea sucks, don't be too proud to admit it. Don't be "married to your idea". Be willing to adjust your idea around the responses of your customers. Maybe your idea sucks because boutique business owners in Denver have more business than they can handle, and don't need anymore exposure. Aha! A pain point. More business than they can handle? Investigate. What makes it hard? What would make it easier? Etc.

Guerilla mentioned The Lean Startup. Go read it. These principles are directly out of that concept.

So, again...

boatBurner said:
Sell your service to people before it's built.

If you can do that, you'll be a few steps ahead.
Click to expand...
 
boatBurner said:
Then allow me to find you.

1.) Identify your market, then trim it down

So you've got a web app idea and you want to market to business owners. But that's a broad designation, so let's trim it down. You want to market to boutique business owners in the Denver, CO area.

2.) Research

Learn about your customers and learn about your competitors. Don't worry about researching data trends like search, social, or content. I'm not saying that those aren't useful metrics, but they'll become irrelevant once you start talking to business owners. For now, know everything about your competitors and be able to talk shop with your customers.

3.) Get on the phone

By now, you've got a spreadsheet 100+ long of potential customers. Spend a week or so calling them. Here's a rough layout of your conversation:

  1. Introduce yourself as a startup company.
  2. Give them the elevator pitch.
  3. Tell them your product/service will be available to the public on [insert ETA].
  4. Invite them to subscribe to your service now, an offer only eligible for boutique business owners in the Denver, CO area.
  5. Give them the perks of adopting early. *
  6. Close the deal and/or setup a follow-on meeting.

* Just because you don't have a product or service created doesn't mean you can't offer something of value. Here are some ideas:

  • Be a voice in the development process and get the features you'd need.
  • Offer lifetime priority support for as long as they're a member.
  • Grandfathered pricing below the anticipated price tag for life.
  • Provide a secondary service, such as an SEO audit.
  • Offer the non-automated version of your service (if applicable). For example, if your service will generate monthly reports based on popularity metrics of boutique stores, provide it to them manually until the application is ready.
  • Offer them premium user features, like "priority business listing" for a month once the application launches.

A call center out here in Arizona calls households and businesses requesting donations for the Dept. of Transportation and Highway Patrol. Their callers sell business owners on giving them money for almost nothing in return. If you can't close a few business owners as early adopters, then your salesmanship sucks or your idea sucks.

If your salesmanship sucks, admit it and hire a biz dev guy. There's no way around it.

If your idea sucks, don't be too proud to admit it. Don't be "married to your idea". Be willing to adjust your idea around the responses of your customers. Maybe your idea sucks because boutique business owners in Denver have more business than they can handle, and don't need anymore exposure. Aha! A pain point. More business than they can handle? Investigate. What makes it hard? What would make it easier? Etc.

Guerilla mentioned The Lean Startup. Go read it. These principles are directly out of that concept.

So, again...
Click to expand...
Got ya, thanks, now its all clear! :pimp:
guerilla said:
Read THE LEAN STARTUP. It's not a bible, but it will give you some direction with regards to validating ideas with minimum models.
Click to expand...

Will do so.

Gotta sort everything in my head and make good plan. Thank you people for help and time you have put.

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