Chapter 14

Everything You Need to Know about Perfecting Your First Product (in about an Hour)

PROFESSIONALS MAKE IT REAL, NOT IDEAL

The product you sell is the last element of the UnStoppable Six. As we’ve noted, to avoid having to say “product and/or service” every time, we just use the word product to describe what customers pay you to give them—because product and service are, in essence, the same.

Notice that we’ve saved this section for last. Popular myth says that product comes first—that entrepreneurs spend all their time dreaming up a million-dollar idea like the Frisbee or bifocal lenses, then patent it, and then start raking in profits. The underlying assumption is that the product is fail-safe at conception—which implies that the would-be entrepreneur should think first and foremost about product.

But by now you may smell a paradox coming. The odds of success are stacked with a vengeance against those who try to launch a business the “perfect it first,” product-centric way. Instead, you must think about every element in the UnStoppable Six from day one, then build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that provides the benefit you assume customers need for a price they can afford. You must put this actual, imperfect test product into their hands as soon as you possibly can so they can see, touch, wear, drive, or otherwise use it. Then listen, learn, and adjust as customers tell you how to transform your flawed product into the ideal, million-dollar baby that everyone wants to buy.

Remember how we said the best salespeople aren’t the best talkers, they’re the best listeners? Well, the same goes for entrepreneurs developing their first product. The most successful ones are the best listeners. They live by this credo:

“If you listen to what customers tell you about the real pluses and minuses of your product, they will give you the keys to the safe.”

REMEMBER, NOBODY WANTS 57 FEATURES; THEY WANT 1 DONE BEST

We first covered this rule in Chapter 6 (Ideas, People, and Execution), but it’s so important, it’s worth hearing it explained by someone who lives it every day.

We spoke recently to Nick Longo, a seasoned, successful entrepreneur and cofounder and director of Geekdom in San Antonio, Texas. Geekdom is a collaborative workspace started by Rackspace founders, where entrepreneurs, developers, and innovators can meet potential team members, share, learn, and work every day for a small monthly membership fee in a community atmosphere. Geekdom’s mission is to seed and feed new entrepreneurs in the San Antonio metro area, expand the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and grow new employers like Rackspace for the city at large.

Nick sees a lot of new product ideas every day. We asked if he recommends any books or classes on developing the idea and first prototype for fledgling products.

“You don’t need a book,” he said. “Just a few principles I can tell you right now before my cell coverage cuts out in the parking garage.” Needless to say, we like the set of this man’s sails. So what follows is a paraphrase of the product wisdom we learned from Nick Longo.

Feature Creep Kills

The biggest rookie mistake is feature creep. You see this problem especially with geeks and software developers who love their gadgets, but it applies to everyone. They work for months to “enhance” and “improve” their product, creating minor feature after feature, thinking they need more and more. But what they really need to do is find the one thing their product will do better than anyone else’s—something the customer needs and will pay for—and get a test product to market ASAP. Otherwise, you may be working for months on a product that nobody wants, or one that customers might want if you fix something basic that you couldn’t see.

The only way to find out is to complete your MVP and get it out there. Customers have no bias or ax to grind. They will tell you the truth fast. Customer feedback is worth its weight in gold, and we never stop reminding entrepreneurs of its importance.

Sometimes customer feedback makes you realize the need to fold your tent on this particular idea and move on. Even so, you always learn something of great value from any test product that you can put into your next product idea. You haven’t failed, you’ve pivoted. You’ve opted to move in a better direction. Other times, customers give you the golden nugget you didn’t see that makes your current idea a winner. And if you’re listening to customers, it’s really common to find that the feature you thought was the main thing isn’t what they love about your product at all. What they love is a side function you thought was a throwaway, but they can’t get enough of it. They’re telling their friends about it. By accident, they’ve shown you a really big need and desire, which leads to the product feature and benefit on which you should be focusing your business.

The “And versus Or” Rule

We also tell entrepreneurs to change their mind-set from “and” to “or” because choosing the big focus of your product is usually a choice of this versus that, a series of sacrifices, not a pileup of additives that annoys most customers. We tell them, “‘And’ doesn’t scale. The secret is ‘Or.’”

The “30–60–90” Rule

Another rule of thumb we give every developer is to think 30–60–90. The 30–60–90 rule applies specifically to web app developers, but it’s relevant for any new product, from a restaurant or hair salon to a line of homemade jams and jellies.

The 30–60–90 Rule forces entrepreneurs to act by imposing real, numerical deadlines for getting the thing out there and into customers’ hands where it belongs.

“Minimum Viable” Means Not Too Soon

Minimum and viable are two words to take literally when it comes to developing and testing your MVP. They mean just what they say. Yes, you can have people test-drive your super-handling experimental car before you’ve finished choosing the paint scheme or even installing the back seats—but you can’t do it before the engine can start, the gears can shift, and you can drive fast around the track. By the same token, you can open your motel before the outside landscaping is finished, but not before you have bedsheets and shower curtains.

MVP means you have to be able to demonstrate your DSI in performance before making a promise and exposing yourself to customers. If you test too soon, you waste the prospect’s time and risk your credibility, and often you won’t get a second chance.

This happens too often with new restaurants. The local community has been waiting for the new eatery to open for months. The menu looks fun and everyone’s hoping a great new place has been added to the town. It’s packed the first night. But the problem is that opening night is about a week too soon. The wait staff is slow and confused. The orders get mixed up. The chicken tenders are undercooked. The credit card machine isn’t connected and someone from the table has to go out to an ATM to get cash. The manager runs around apologizing: “This is our first week, you know.” Most people are sympathetic—they’re just not in the mood to ever come back. You’ve asked them to sacrifice a chunk of their monthly dining budget to be your guinea pigs. Worse, they will tell their friends.

This business simply opened before it had an MVP: delicious hot food, served reasonably quickly in a pleasant atmosphere.

Restaurants offer an extreme case, but if you burn first-time triers by failing on your core promise, (1) you won’t get an accurate test of how your product performs with customers, and (2) those prospects may never return. That’s a fatal first mistake if you’re a local business.

So get to market soon, but don’t serve the cake until it’s baked. Recognizing the difference takes judgment and the willingness to listen to your gut instincts. An entrepreneur needs both.

WHICH DATA TO LISTEN TO, WHICH TO THROW AWAY?

Here’s the big question about products. We know that people resist change of any kind and are natural doubters, especially when it comes to other people’s new ideas. And we know that many people (especially your friends) want to be nice when you show them a prototype you’ve slaved over for months, so they’re likely to say nice things. But you need the truth. How do you decide whether feedback should be taken to heart or ignored?

It’s a judgment call if you only have a small universe of test customers, but here’s a helpful rule of thumb. A person who simply tells you, “It’s awesome, dude,” is just being courteous. If she starts using your product after the trial, she’s a satisfied user. And if she tells others about it, and particularly if she’s interested enough to engage you and talk about it, in all likelihood she’ll become a real customer or, even better, a promoter.

On the other hand, few people outside of family and friends will take the time or trouble to tell you how they really feel if they don’t like your product. They’d rather just move on, usually without volunteering any concrete explanation.

But it’s worth your while to try to discover the real reason, even when that requires a bit of probing. When you can engage the group who didn’t buy and find out the real reasons why your product didn’t work for them, it’s often the most valuable feedback you’ll ever get.

The other rule of thumb is that if you want real, honest positive and negative feedback (the only kind you want) about your beta, you’ve got to mean it when you ask for it. People will know if you’re sincere and be much more likely to tell you the truth.

Sometimes the nature of your product makes it relatively easy to capture feedback from a large number of users. For example, if you have a downloadable app, which affords a bigger beta universe, you can avail yourself of wider-scale e-mail or Web surveys to reach people outside the walls of the compound. You’ll still have to use your judgment to determine what the results really mean, and you’ll always have a few outliers—angry, unreasonable naysayers on one side and a few people who will over-praise you on the other. Just capture all the data and learn from the trends.

Here some other basics on tapping the free genius of customers who are waiting to help perfect your MVP:

UNSTOPPABLE THEMES

The big unifying themes of The UnStoppables should be coming together for you as we complete our analysis of the UnStoppable Six. As the guy who runs Geekdom every day affirmed, “Simple wins,” “Find a Dominant Selling Idea,” “Focus most on what customers want and let them to tell you how to succeed,” “Nobody knows anything—the market is always smarter than you are,” and above all, “Get your product into motion.” It’s the same way that you must get yourself and your founders into motion. Motion is what makes magic.

This short chapter has been about what to aim for to create a unique, sellable product, not coming up with the “what” itself. The “what” germinates like a seed with a yearning, an inkling, an interest, or an unscratched itch. Then you apply the magic of the UnStoppable Six as you think about Difference, Team, what Customers want, whether there’s a market you can sell to, if you can build it, and so forth. You think about these things—and work and rework them—over and over with your founders until an idea forms that you can’t wait to execute.

In this game, the way to win a giant jackpot is to master the fundamentals, not to play the lottery—fundamentals like building an MVP, achieving the milestone of breaking even, and formulating an idea that has one obvious, appealing benefit rather than 30.

From pro athletes to the Navy SEALs, the greatest practitioners do one thing better than everyone else in the world: they are incredibly good at the fundamentals and they never stop practicing to master them. They know that the fundamentals are the gateway to all great things because the fundamentals are the essence. The more you practice conceiving and honing MVP, failing, succeeding, and failing until customers say it’s right, the sharper your intuition will get, the better your judgment will be, and the more everything you touch will eventually turn to gold.