In light of the findings at the recently concluded iSPIRT Roundtable at Mangalore. There is nothing to get disappointed if your team did not get shortlisted. There is always a next time as long as you improve your business plan and think about how to be a market disrupt-er or your category leader.
Here is something to consider for your business plan if you have already not done it.
Have you thought about this?
- Who is your customer?
Think about a “persona” for your product or service. This means a “typical” customer who might buy your product and what they would do with it.
- What can you do for your customer? a. k.a addressing “Pain point”
The next thing is connecting with your customer by addressing a pain-point they may have and developing a solution for their problem with your product/service.
- How will your customer acquire your product?
The next thing to consider would be they ways in which your customer would get your product. In the case of “software” one needs to think about perpetual “licenses” or the more recent cloud enabled offerings which are “subscription” based or mobile app downloadable formats with “freemium” & Ad enabled models.
- How do you make money off your product?
Think about a business model of how you make money off your wares and make it worthwhile for yourself and your potential investors in the future. As many would say its not enough if you have a mobile app which can be downloadable by many but a real business behind it like Uber or Ola cabs!
- How do you design and build your product?
Here think about Design Considerations like programming languages/dependencies (technology) that assures scalability of your product/service, user interface (UX design) that appeals to your customer, or ease of acquisition/use and some key assumptions that can be quickly, cheaply, effectively tested in the market. Identifying your “beachhead” market to target is “Key”!
Don’t forget the importance of developing a high level product specification and modify this through the primary research and inquiry process as you go along building your product.
- Lastly, How do you scale your business?
Think about if your product is a market disrupt-er as was envisioned by Segway Inc., the developers of the Human Segway Transporter, an electric vehicle with two wheels. Their plan was to make this the next “big” revolution in transportation in an urban setting. Apart from having design issues for stabilization, the product had acquisition and storage challenges to be universally adopted by many in urban areas of the US. But a little know company called “Hubway” captured the imagination of the urban residents by their modified bicycle with not only their design but also the operational model of making it easy to acquire, use and store the product.
Note: See pictures –
Hubway paid particular attention to storage of the device in bike racks at various locations for example in a City setting and make it easy to acquire it by just presenting a credit card in a vending machine type of access but also return it at other locations like what one would do with a rental car. This enabled them to capture significant market in the US.
While doing this don’t forget to have fun and as they say “fail fast” and “pivot” often!
Good Luck.