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Each prosperous company that I launched had an important thing in common: they have Solved a point of pain.
Back at university, when I was building a website for an association on campus, I needed a membership system that allowed people to create profiles and browse others. This is how, long before social media became one thing, I created the profile manager, essentially a proto-sided book. It became a success because so many other websites had the same needs.
Quick advance for a few years, when I was a developer in a New York media company, losing hours at my office construction forms. I hated the task of building these forms – it was long and boring. My company, Jotform, exists today for two reasons: 1) The forms are incredibly useful, for a variety of things, and 2) I never wanted to waste time build one from zero.
Never mind How a flashy productOr to what extent the market will never take off if it does not solve a problem.
In relation: Do not look for problems: healing your own pain points is a good way to develop a new product
The importance of pain points
Some founders believe that if they create something pretty cool, customers will materialize as if by magic. It never works. As a result, these founders publish a product with exactly zero users. Remember JUIECRO, the $ 400 juice of which only function Could easily be done by hand? It became the LaughterBefore going out quickly. If you’ve already watched the shark tank, you know how often unique, original and completely useless products get funding (rarely).
To be clear, solving a pain point does not necessarily mean developing a completely new idea – it can simply mean taking an existing product and making it better. I still think of Warby Parker, the supplier of glasses that has changed our way of buying new images. It’s not that you couldn’t buy glasses before – it’s just that the innovative Warby Parker’s home test program has made things much easier and much more affordable.
Find the point of pain
A small wealthy subset of the population will behave for flashy and not tested products and services, the best bet of a founder is to target ordinary people.
The fact that the vast majority of Americans – 98%In fact – Using smartphones has opened enormous potential to revolutionize how the services are provided. Many companies that succeed in this space are not exactly sexy – take Withdrawwhich allows customers to send money internationally of their devices without having to go to Western Union; Or City blockA health care provider focused on technology that provides care for poorly served communities.
Finding the right point of pain is an art – for me, my goal was to resolve mine. But you can also look at the people you know, within your community or the world in general. If you are looking outside of yourself or your immediate circle, it is advantageous to go where people have evacuated. Forums like Reddit, Slack groups and Discord servers are plagued by people sharing their frustrations. Your goal should be not to present, but to listen and to see what people say.
If you already have an idea of an idea, define a google alert for certain keywords and phrases associated with it, or use Buzzsumo To see what discussions occur around your subject.
In relation: How to identify the pain point of your customers to skyrocket
Get the facts
The above suggestions represent where you should start doing your research – but this is only the start. “Although the intestinal sensation or a personal experience with a problem can be a strong signal, there is a problem to be solved, without a work of discovery of appropriate products, you will not really know if you have a winning solution”, ” said Julia Austin, lecturer at the Harvard Business School.
A crucial question that I ask all my mentories is: “If the product was ready at the moment, how would you make 100 people to use it in a short period of time?” This comes back to the root of the significant distinction between interest and validation of the problem. Although interest can be measured in several ways – positive feedback, social media commitment, etc. – It is not the same thing as validation of the problem, which is the confirmation process that there is not only a problem to be solved, but on the way in which a product can resolve it most successfully.
A good way to kick the tires on your idea is to Test your product Manually, otherwise known as the Wizard of Oz test. This allows you to collect comments while saving the effort to build a complete prototype. Make sure you pay attention to the answers you get – the reactions to your manual solution will be essential when you build the real thing.
Resolving points of pain is not only a path to business success – this is the foundation. Whether you approach your frustrations or can use the needs of others, the key is to listen, validate and innovate. When you focus on real problems, your product has the best chance of having an impact.
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