The trap of creating The Perfect Product

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is a book that became a sensation and a success among all the entrepreneurs and people involved in the world of business. To start off, you should know that when you are trying to enter a market by offering some product in it, don’t make the mistake of trying to create a “perfect product”, because there is no such thing.

So, what do you do then? Well, there is something known as an “MVP”, which stands for a minimal viable product. The MVP is a product that is not too fancy and it isn’t too bland either so that no one would want it, but it gets the job done of making a place in the marketplace.

Build your product based on feedback

Testing a product starts with the early adopters who are the people that feel excited to try new products even before the products are properly established in the market. Such people give businesses the feedback they require to know whether people will want to use such a product or not. Most businesses make the mistake of planning way too much for products and they spend way too much time to create a “perfect product.” But this never works! Do you know why? Well, it is because such products usually consist of features and other aspects that the majority of the people don’t even care for at all!

Follow the 80/20 rule

There is a principle known as the 80/20 principle. Businesses should consider it when making a product. Businesses should not put in 80% in a product that only a mere 20% of people are going to use but rather they should put in 20% in a product that 80% of the people are going to use! Many businesses make the mistake of thinking that the people “need” something and usually the truth is that they don’t. Eric Ries came up with something really cool known as the feedback loop to deal with this issue!

The feedback loop

So, what’s the feedback loop? Well, it consists of 3 steps; Learn->Build->Measure.

Let me explain this feedback loop. Eric Ries says that if a business or startup wants to succeed in the market, it needs to create a really good product very quickly and cheaply, and then put it in the market at once. This will lead to the stage when people use it and give feedback to the startup or business. Once the feedback is received, the startup can understand what they need to improve in the product. They make the improvements and they do the cycle of feedback loop again and they keep doing it until they get all the feedback possible and they end up making the best product that they possibly can.

Once a startup has been through the feedback loop a few times, it needs to either persevere if things aren’t changing or pivot. If the MVP of the startup is doing well, it needs to persevere. If it isn’t doing so good, the startup needs to pivot, which means that it either needs to make improvements or changes to the product or the startup can even change its target market.

The Grand Experiment

According to Eric Ries, everything that a startup does is a “grand experiment”. From making the product to putting it out in the market to getting the feedback, it is all a very big experiment that could lead to lots of success for the startup. Everything is learnt and improved through the process of experimenting with the customers and the overall market.

Conclusion

So, basically a startup needs to put out a product quickly so that it can get feedback and understand if there’s an audience for it or not. Planning too much and not putting out a product at once is a mistake that the unsuccessful startups make. So, if people want their startup to be a successful one, all they need to do is make something quick, put it out quick and get the feedback quick so that they can understand the demands of the market and make the right changes to the product so that the “perfect product” can be created which will help the startup achieve success.

On the next issue, we will talk about how to start a business on your passion with low budget! Find it here!