Nibletz Staff
So, you’re a startup business, and you’re want to formalize an idea and put it into production. If only it were that easy. Each stage of the development phase requires an entirely new level of expertise, research, and knowledge. From the moment you step into the office before setting the wheels in motion, you should know every single maneuver you plan to make, calculate every possibility of friction, time loss and halts in production before you give the go ahead. Much, much easier said than done, as you can imagine. Here’s a brief guide to the types of angles you should be striving toward.
Industry, competitors, prospective customers
Your business needs to understand the type of market you’re heading into. Study the recent trends in buyers, price, technical abilities of the rival products which are on sale and the future or current needs of the customers.
Who are your competitors and what kind of business and product have they got? You must be wary of what kind of service their product offers customers so you can either avoid copying them or compete directly against them by offering them something improved or on the opposite end of the spectrum.
What kind of product do your potential consumers want? A marketing campaign and questionnaire would go a long way in identifying what the majority of customers want or want improvement for.
Product vision, specifications, pathway
Growing your business must be a cold and methodical process, as you want to minimize any overt risk you might have to take. The functionality of your product is just as important as the cost to make, package and then distribute it. If your product is going to be intricate and finely tuned, you may struggle to find a manufacturer who is willing to take on such a complex idea.
However, there are companies which specialize in customized, technically demanding engineering. The most abundant material businesses use is plastic, learn about injection molding should your product require close tolerance parts required for a wide variety of features.
How will you distribute it? The key isn’t choosing the manufacturer, to begin with, it’s to locate where a large group of your consumers are. Obviously, the world has gone global and nothing is too far or out of reach, so don’t limit yourself by land. At the same time, don’t plant yourself at the top of a mountain, strategically placing yourself in the middle of a network will prove a smart decision in the long run.
Software and modernization
If your product is digital, you should research into the newest and most recent coding practices and how they can be applied to your product. Picking the right software is crucial as this will be the platform for all future decisions and capabilities to prosper or fail on.
Another important aspect is the pathway of internally hosting or using the Cloud system. Both offer you different security and innovation avenues. Internally hosting would mean, all the key updates would be done via a direct route which would only be privy from inside your company. Do you have the physical storage space for all your customers on a large hardware setup?
Utilizing the Cloud system means your storage space multiples almost to an unlimited scale. Software updates are able to be made en-masse rather than your customers having to go directly to your website or product services via your company. Cloud is also a lot more secure and you have the option of multi-layering your clients’ data.
In-house or outsource
If you’re the technical inventor then you more than anybody else know the ins and the outs of your product and what the potential design flaws will be. Therefore, you need to set up a frontline team which will be your reactionary team. This team will pick up faults and malfunctions in the product before anyone else does as they will be the circle of employees who test the product for inefficiencies.
If you’re not the technical developer of a product, you’ll need to set a team up or hire a development agency, which will have direct control over the specifications of the product. However, it must be said that as you’re a startup it’s perfectly reasonable to have an agency draw up the technical aspects of the product, but for a long-term business plan, you’ll need to internalize the technical processes.
Test product and marketing
Before you got to market, you need to means test your product. Make a small batch and send them out to your clients or prospective buyers. With them send an evaluation team, who will absorb any criticisms and valued feedback which will enhance your product or service. This will be known as the alpha or beta stage. You’re still incorporating improvements and slight modifications to suit the primary customer base.
Don’t fall victim to what your investor wants the product to be. Many startups have hurled themselves off the cliff, trying to satisfy an investor who expects a certainty from your business. Don’t follow trends just for the sake of a quick buck and safe pathway. You’ll end up as a carbon copy of a product which is more successful and has a professional team behind it, well enough, that the evolution of that product will be miles ahead of your own in the same time frame. Rather than relying on further extensions to process, you must aim for a model which puts high-quality testing, feedback, and innovation at the heart of it.
Sales
Premising a sales channel and supporting the marketing will be one of if not the most expensive moment of your business taking shape. Assuming a rise in costs, you will need to maintain a level of funding which is constant. The CEO or an investor will want to scale-up activities in-line with the growth of the economy; i.e. you cannot stay a small player for long as other startups will overtake and become the breadwinner for all future customers and or investors. This is the part where you create a track-record for your company as you’re out in the wild for the first time. Revenue and profit will be your mantra from this point forward.
