Get your start up idea to market

Since starting Mobiddiction back in 2011, and subsequently changing the model to a Pty Ltd in 2013. We’ve been blessed and grown organically with opportunities to work on some really niche pieces of tech for Government and Enterprise. But, the journey to get here hasn’t been easy — well, that’s a story for another day.

This post I wanted to focus on some practical tips for those of your with aspirational, self-motivated out there who want to get an idea off your chest and into the market.

I visit start up hubs, listen to ideas, attend networking events and in short, meet a lot of people. So many of them have some really amazing ideas but get stuck in getting it to market. Or, get it to market and not sure what to do next?

I’ve written a few things that are plainly my observations and hope these help to get your idea to market. If you need help, absolutely happy to connect or catch up.

You are great at something, not at everything.

Most of you are skilled at something, and really good at something such as maybe your technical skill, or maybe design or your understanding of the overall strategy. But, an idea to get into becoming a product or a solution most times needs multiple skills and for these you will need to find a mix of different skills to make it happen for you.

I’ve done this through networking, attending events (there are plenty of inexpensive, free events) where you can meet like minded people. Share your ideas, problems and don’t hesitate to reach out to even industry high achievers as you will be surprised there are some who will be genuinely willing to help.

If you don’t try you do not know.

Get to market, Be quick.

This is a common tendency for a lot of us — we tend to over think and over complicate things, things get too deep or you just keep looking at what others are doing for a very long time. Procrastination does not help. Your idea never gets solidified, the idea keeps changing and at some stage motivation dilutes and you tend to start thinking of parallel ideas.

My suggestion is stick to your guns, just look around how many coffee shops are out there but somehow they all survive — obviously, you need good coffee, great customer service, pricing etc. but being there is what matters.

Agile is a fancy word, but reality in a tech start up or product solutions specially in tech such as apps etc, the landscape is changing every day. So, buckle up and get to market quickly.

You never “Fail” you only learn.

Partner with intent. Be clear.

A lot of us look for partners to get things up and going, or at a stage where you want to launch or grow and look for like-minded, professional partnerships to help take care, nurture, grow, launch your product or idea. My humble advise is to ensure that you first have a document or something in writing which clearly articulates what you are looking for in a partnership ie. is it a marketing partnership with a fixed wage and incentive, or is it a tech-developer partnership with a carrot of delivering on time. Just ensure that you are very clear on this so there are no mixed messages.

Think about the overall picture.

This one is a classic case where I’ve seen a lot of them get unstuck. You have an emotional quotient that clearly outweighs practicality — you get carried away and want to launch your “big idea” but ensure that you have the funding for taking the idea to the next step, have you thought about how are you going to get a “share of eye balls” or “share of voice” in this heavily crowded market? You will need time, patience and a hell lot of money. Creating a big idea and waiting with a hook with a bait to catch attention of a big-fish with dollars ain’t going to happen too quick, or even to everyone. Think about how you can launch, survive for at least 6 months to begin with. These are some typical things you will need to think of if you are looking to launch a tech-app or an online solution.

• Overall marketing website. WordPress theme’s seems to be the best choice here. Try and find someone who can do this quickly for you so you are not driven into weeks and weeks of designing your website.
• emails, text and comms — do you need forgot password, welcome emails or incentivising customers with more offer emails? There are different ways to do this. We’ve used Twilio for SMS, and SendGrid for automated emails but then used marketing CRM’s such as FreshWorks or MailChimp, Campaign Monitor to create workflow based email programs.
• Apps. Do you need to build your own? This can be quite a process and can take months and a lot of cash away. Most ideas seem to be 80% reliant on the app being great, work well and also that users will find value to keep returning to it. Think about whether you want a great app with great UX and need to show off your product, dashboard and be quick to market with new tech and need to integrate iOT etc — Go NATIVE apps for both iOS and Android. If you are a utility, function based idea where UX is not the greatest thing — go HYBRID in the app development. There are arguments both sides of the coin with merits and de-merit. Reach out to me if you are stuck and need another set of recommendation. Happy to help if I can.
• Data. Security. Hosting. Ongoing…. How are you going to keep all this going. You will need to think about costs of ongoing hosting, ongoing maintenance, building your own backend, content management CMS etc. Seems AWS is a popular choice to host things but remember for that to work you will need the skills, or someone with those skills and don’t get lured by free-tier’s etc by any company as really think about it “nothing is free”. Before you get too carried away and start building your own, rather than focus on “app-building” templates and services, have a look at services such as Google’s Firebase or Sydney Start up AoToMoT who offer some ready backend’s and services you can integrate with.
• Marketing. This is a big one as a lot of them as i’ve see get stuck into design straight away but don’t think much about the end customer. What is your audience, target location, type of device use habits, age, gender etc and that is where you end up designing a great end user experience. So, if you are not the best in terms of coming up with an ideal design for delivering a great customer experience — get in touch with someone maybe from your close network first to see if they can help you. Again, be mindful that there can be way too many distractions, ideas and tech when it comes to marketing such as automation etc. But, do you really need it? And, more so can you afford it just yet.

Design comes later. Get your customer experience right first.

I save this one to the last. But, really you must ensure that you take care of this before doing anything that you get stuck and hard to retract or change later. What is your revenue model? How are you going to make money? Tech has become cheap to access, too many variations in the mix, too much noise but for you to stand out not only does your solution be clearly delivering value to the end customer but you will need money to ensure you keep your venture afloat and yes, that may mean one day you will get that investor knocking on your door.

So, how are you going to make money?

Hope some of these tips help. If there’s anything I can do to help feel free to message me on LinkedIn or pop in a comment here.

Have faith, hard-work pays off.

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