Five steps to survive the ‘Valley of Death’
The riskiest phase for a new product is the point between the conception of the idea, to when it is profitable and self-sustainable. So many products fail at this stage that it has come to be known as the ‘Valley of Death’.
So how do we give ourselves the best chance to survive the Valley of Death?
The first trick is to understand why this happens. Products usually fail at this point because the costs to get the product to market are higher than anticipated, and the timelines are longer. Both of these combined means that start-ups often run out of investment before they have realised the true potential of their business.
So how do you ensure your expenses stay on track and within the expected timelines?
Here are 5 steps for you to follow:
Make sure you are solving a genuine problem for a big enough target market. This is the foundation upon which you build your product and it can be done cost-effectively and quickly by a single individual.
Ensure your solution is a good fit for that problem. This can be done cost-effectively and quickly by working with a product designer who will build cheap prototypes for you to test with your target market. This will save you the expense of building the actual product until you know you have found a good fit. It is also important to involve your engineering lead in this phase to ensure that your solution is technically feasible and not too expensive to build.
Ensure your solution is significantly better than the competitive alternatives, so that when you come to selling it, you know exactly who will buy your product, why they should buy it, and why it is better than anything else in the market.
Only build what is necessary to get your solution to market, with no extra ‘features’ that you think you may need in the future. If you come into the build phase with the knowledge that your solution is a good fit for the problem you are trying to solve (point 2 above) then build just that. As tempting as it may be, don’t try to solve future problems that may or may not appear, as this will delay the development time and add significant cost.
Choose your top three Go to Market (GTM) strategies and use rapid testing to validate their effectiveness. This way you should quickly and cost-effectively find the strategy that works for you, and then you double down on your efforts.
Each step is like a block, where you build upon a strong foundation to give yourself the best possible chance to succeed. Therefore, each step above must be finished before you proceed to the next. By doing this, you will avoid these four common mistakes:
Coming up with a solution before first proving the problem actually exists.
Building the solution before first ensuring that it is a good fit for the problem and your users.
Building a solution that tries to solve all problems for everyone.
Marketing and selling your product first identifying the problem you are solving, for whom, and why it is significantly better than the competition.
Follow the five steps above to take your innovative product from idea to scale as cost-effectively and quickly as possible, therefore significantly improving your chances of surviving the ‘Valley of Death’.
How to survive the Valley of Death
