Are you planning to launch an awesome new product? Congratulations! I’d just like to share with you some ideas:
1) Think about your product. Right? Sure? Ok…
2) Business Plan? No! Think about your product. I didn’t want to bother you in the first point but it was too soon to have your product ready for the market!
3) Investment? You haven’t learnt anything yet. Yeah… the product is still waiting. Is not complete. Think about it again and again…
4) “Ok. I’m done with this. My product is really ready for the market and it’s potentially amazing for customers out there”.
5) If the fourth point is complete, then you have to show the product to your peers. Friends, family… and enemies, of course! Try to surround yourself with smart and experienced people. When someone finds a weak point, you should take note. If that happens twice in the same point: you have to review your product.
6) Get the feedback and put it all together. Review every comment with your team. Take your time to discuss about the solutions and repeat point 5 until you feel you’re really done with the “testing” stage.
7) Keep working on the product, even when you’re sure you’ve reached the desired functionality, look&feel, usability… Everything can be improved. But if you’re REALLY sure that you have a potentially ground-breaking product, it’s time to begin with the famous “Business Plan”.
8) Yes. You need a business plan but don’t get yourself to a wrong place. In the past, business plans were like a flying path you wouldn’t leave if you didn’t want to fail (crash). In the real world, a business plan will help you to analyze the market, to have a better knowledge about competitors and you’ll have some spredsheets that will let you -and your team- know how much it would cost to try to make your dream come true… But It won’t be a document to predict the future 😉
9) Good product, good business plan… it seems everything’s ok to go to point 10.
10) Investors. In my opinion, you shouldn’t go looking for a huge amount of money. It’s better to look for an experienced business angel and/or an incubator and share a little part of your company (5-10{a31a598c08b97e04c471714f0e9a9135ffea9d13036728f66bee3f63eed82732}) with them and, after that, start the funding process with some advice from them. Investors and lawyers are used to a language that sometimes sounds weird and I’m pretty sure that you don’t want to end up like Eduardo Savarin in “The Social Network”.
If you’ve arrived to the tenth point, and you’re in the right time and in the right place -sometimes your ideas will come sooner or later than customer’s needs- you have a chance to success.