If you’re a startup with a great idea for a product or service, make sure it’s something people want. And that it solves a problem for them.
In this six-minute video from Google Developers, David Katz shares his experiences working with and consulting startups. Katz founded three companies in the past seven years and is active in the startup community.
Key takeaways from the video:
Most startups fail. They don’t succeed because they build products people don’t want.
Create a service/product that is 10 times better the competition. People don’t like change.
Do something different than the competition. Stay focused: keep your features minimal. Example: MixTiles (iOS only) takes the photos from your phone and puts them on your wall. The first version had no crop options.
How do you know what you build is something people want? Two techniques you can use are:
- Retention: how many people return to use your product/service. It only works if people want your product/service. One way to measure retention: out of the people who started using your product/service, how many people are active after 30 days?
- Customer feedback: how do people feel about your product/service. Make it easy for people to give you feedback. Hopefully you’ll get stories from your customers telling you how excited they are about your product/service.
I came across this video and other short videos from Google Developers last week. I found them helpful, with their focus on user experience at the beginning stages of creating services or products.
Let me know what you think of the videos.
