Alex Lowe on Software and Startups

They say there are three things to building a startup successful: team, market, and product. I want to explore these three concepts from my experience and then get into some of the other things that are necessary that team, market, product help you attain.

Team 

The team, in my opinion, is of the utmost importance. It doesn’t stand alone, a great team with a poor product and market is going to fail. But I put a lot of weight on team. Team is what generates the market and identifies and exploits the market opportunity. Team is the brains, the processor that makes the whole thing work.

Team is also relatively static. The founders in a startup will spend years and years together building product and addressing market. Markets landscapes change, customers change, and therefore products change. But it’s one team that gains the wisdom of living through this change.

Another concept in the startup world, that I agree with, is that it’s never your first idea that succeeds, it’s always the eighth idea. What does that mean? You start a business with a great idea, but through experience and gained insight you iterate and discover more and the business you succeed with sometimes never looks like the business you started with. But, the team is often the same.

I frequently have said that “the team is the same.” I say this because the core team needs to be cohesive. Needs to work well together. Needs to mesh. The core team must execute flawlessly together to succeed. You must have complimentary skillsets so that there is enough talent in the pool to address all the aspects of running a business. If you are missing skills, acquire them or find another team member.

Market

If team is first, market is second. Finding a great market opportunity is a hard thing to do. I’d argue it’s the hardest thing to do. Searching for a market with a gap or a problem or a need can be tricky. Trying to establish a new market is difficult to do, though not impossible. If you can find that gap in the marketplace and have a market strategy to exploit it you’re way ahead of the game.

In searching for a market I suggest to sticking with what you know and have experience with. You’ve spent time in a career, in an industry, in a market learning the ins and outs and getting paid to get an education in that market. Leverage that knowledge in your own business venture. If you seek out a market you are unfamiliar with be sure to solicit as much advice and input as possible. You need to learn some things as well as learn what you don’t know.

A usually overlooked aspect of the new entrepreneur is a strategy to reach a market. A need is identified, but how do you bridge the gap between your product and the customer. A strategy to get your product to market is just as important as identifying the market itself.

Getting your market strategy in place is tough. First you need to take your market and break it down. Then break it down again and again. Keep narrowing your market down until you have a sliver of the market that you can talk to directly. You want to know so much about who your customer is that you could describe their gender, age, income level, and other personal characteristics.

You have limited resources and by focusing in a very narrow sliver of the market you will have a clear message and focused efforts. By addressing a market segment as a whole your message gets watered down. By speaking to everyone you are speaking to no one. Once you have captured that sliver of the market, start knocking down the next ones like domino’s.

A good market is hard to find, it’s the intersection of what you have personal experience with, where there is an unmet need, and a method of reaching that market.

Product

In this case, think of product as actual product or a service. Product is a critical part of a successful company. Managing a product and especially a product roadmap needs to take several aspects into consideration. When you offer something is just as important as what you offer.

First, the obvious points with the product is that it has to meet your audiences need. You’ve identified a market gap and your product, at a minimum, must fill it. If you can do that then you’re ahead of the game. But, there are other considerations to make as well: can we make the product more pleasurable to use, can we reduce our costs in producing the product, how will we support the product, what are our measures of success.

Having a product roadmap is a critical aspect to the product. Some customers will demand it. But, more than that, you need to make sure to balance your time, resources, money, and opportunity. Forgoing features to gain speed to market. Leaving money on the table to capture a customer base. Delaying release to include a critical feature. Taking time to develop specific barriers. Make sure your first version meets your markets need, then, balance everything else with speed to market, lost opportunity, and barriers to entry.