Build Your Product, Then Your Business
blog.mojotech.com
blog.mojotech.com
We know coding so we spend our time hacking away in dark rooms on product stuff such as frameworks, features, deployments, websites etc.
We leave considerations about marketing, distribution, customer research till later, and end up building something that we have no way to effectively market.
The order should probably be to develop the business model, then develop the product, and only add this kind of administravia in as absolutely necessary.
[http://www.drdacademy.com/?id=first-solve-the-selling-proble...]
But if you build a product that you want because it fits a need that you have, then it'll probably fit other people's needs as well. And then you attach a price to it, and then people pay for it, just like any other types of goods that people purchase. Examples of products with simple business models? SaaS apps with monthly subscriptions. Build a good product, charge a fee to use it. Yes, you still have to figure out how to market it, but since the big hurdle is getting people to hand over money for the thing you built, you're well on your way.
(And, just one more clarification, talking to potential customers and integrating their feedback while you build the product and making sure that at each step you're building something people want is a good way to make your marketing/distribution problems a lot simpler.)
If there's a way to find that out early then you save yourself valuable time. Time which could determine if you're able to stay alive long enough to succeed or not.
Not at all advocating spending a year on market research but don't go straight from idea to your basement to start coding. Not if you're trying to build a business out if it.
My conversations with others in this community confirm that I am not alone. I have read many comments from Marketers/Product Managers, TPMs, SEOs, CEOs, Designers, Stock Traders, Financial Analysts, Ops Researchers, Executive Assistants, etc.
It really helps persuade people that your idea is worth it when they see that you were driven enough to spend your free time to bring it into existence. It actually probably tells them that 'you' are worth their time moreso than your current idea.
Like accepting credit card payments to a merchant bank account from real customers, or setting up an iOS developer account for a premium app to accept payments from Apple?
One of the pieces of advice YC gives to startups struggling to find direction is to "charge users for something". Surely you can't do this unless you're properly setup to accept payments. I suppose you could accept payments into a personal bank account and incorporate later, but most tax authorities would frown heavily on that.
In my country many online retailers accept payments on personal bank accounts, but being a total novice to receive payments i have some questions : is there an amount of monthly flow of money where tax authorities start checking your transactions in your bank account? also, how is the process? does your bank notify your government that you are receiving an extra-ordinary amount of money?
Build an experiment, then your product.
You have your vision, but before you go into building a product, you test your target market.
Nothing I've ever read has ever advocated getting an NDA or figuring out pricing strategy before you have interested users.