Building Some Products “Backwards” Might Be A Good Idea!

An interesting conversation with Ryan Shepherd, founder of Databrook.io, got me thinking about how to launch new SAAS products.

The current “de facto” approach seems to be some variation on Eric Ries classic The Lean Startup model: build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) as fast as you can, fail often, learn, repeat, then win. And then here is the whole genre of related materials about how to effectively learn from early adopters, adapt, and win.

And I think this approach is a good one – if you have a pretty good idea of the problem you think you want to solve (even if it will probably turn out that you have it at least partially wrong and you need to approach the problem/solution in a new or different way.)

There is also a lot of literature around the idea of “productizing” services. In this scenario, you have some sort of service you deliver – and if you can standardize it – then you can sell a lot more. This has been the path of lots of software companies. Initially they build custom solutions for customers, then at some point, figure out how to turn those “one off “custom solutions into a standardized software package that can be sold efficiently.

This is the route I think Guy Kawasaki was essentially advocating for when he advised folks to “do things that don’t scale.” Welcome special projects, custom requests, and onsite support. Do these things to really learn what customers want – and to establish a beachhead in the market. But I think the assumption here is that you already have a pretty well-defined product vision and should just do the “one offs” to improve and validate that vision.

But Ryan has, correctly I believe, taken this idea in a slightly different direction.

He knows big data analytics. He knows water resources are important. He is not sure what the best product would be to improve access to water resources. So – he is going to market without a product. Instead, he is offering data analytic services to the water industry (and at least initially, the subset of wastewater treatment plant operators. )Every time he completes another consulting engagement, he will know more about the customers and their pain points. At some point, he will know enough to offer a product.

Thus, his approach is a hybrid between custom software builders figuring out how to standardize their work – and professional services firms “productizing” existing services. He will offer professional services initially but has no intention of building a professional services firm. He is a software developer. What he does want to do, like the customer software builder, is experiment and learn until he can define a product that has good market fit. He is just starting in a different place.

All of this reinforces the idea that every product journey is unique. We can get to the solution in a lot of different, often unintended, ways. Grit. Curiosity. Luck. All play a role in success.

Read as many books as you can. Talk to as many people as you can. Think up as many crazy ideas as you can.

Then, ultimately, like Ryan - make YOUR plan. It might work, it might not. Only one way to find out.

Working on (another) plan as we speak,

Joel