WHY is THE most important Question

Starting to build a product is daunting, but in reality, the immediate temptation is always to delve straight into the detail, without really understanding why you are building a product in the first place.

It does not matter whether one works in a startup, large corporate, or even a medium sized organisation that is somewhere between startup and exit strategy. What differentiates the good ones from the bad, is that they understand why they are doing something.



There are a couple of fundamental questions that can be used to look at this:

1. What is your organisation's objective or vision?
2. What is the problem that you are trying to solve?
3. What will make the customer buy your product in the first place?

You will notice that nowhere is "adding value" mentioned - guess what ..... everybody does that - it is not unique.  My other pet hate is the statement - "we have a solution" - guess what ..... so does your competition, and every other vendor competing for the customer spend. So what - get over it.

So why the discussion?  From personal experience and now with the 20/20 benefit of hindsight, I have seen companies fail in their ambitions, simply because they had not really looked at these three questions and seriously tried to answer them.  Experienced angel investors missed it as well - and felt the pain as a result.  To much focus was placed on the uniqueness and "value" of the IP, sales and marketing, and in essence they had solutions looking for a problem.  End result?  No real value proposition .... Lots of focus on marketing with nothing really to market, and lots of focus on how to sell, with no real reason to buy.

The question that is knocking around my head at the moment, is why so often is this stage missed?  In the business case build, evaluation of that business case, by both experienced management teams and investors alike?  Probably because everybody gets caught up in the excitement of a new idea or opportunity, and fails to step back to seriously evaluate the idea calmly. To often, the focus is on return on investment metrics and driving revenue numbers, which is fundamental, but is simply dreaming without the basics taken care of.

That is not to say that the product idea is not solving a problem that the customer may just not have recognised yet. If that problem can be articulated, then you are probably on the right track.  If you have the answers to all three questions and they all line up, then you have to be better off.

I guess I am thinking about the journey that you want to take a customer on, as you build a customer - supplier relationship.  If we want them to invest time and money in the vision and product, then it stands to reason that there has to be a solid rationale for doing it and it must deliver a real benefit.  It has to be a real win-win.

I would argue that these three questions are the first stage of the customer journey - a stage that the customer will never see, but one that will ensure that they certainly reap the benefits of the time and effort spent getting them answered. Oh, and the investors may be happy as well.