Startups Stack Exchange Archive

Which strategy is the best to investigate the needs of customers and create a startup

• posted by: Վարդան Գրիգորյան on 2016-10-28
• tagged: business-model, market-research, strategy, analytics
• score: 1

Most of successful entrepreneurs say that to create a successful startup the founder should find out the hidden needs of potential customers. They say that the strategy of analyzing the market, investigation the current needs and create the appropriate product will not work, because in this case you will be late. But how can it be possible to find out the hidden needs of customers and which strategy will work ?

Answer 11456

• posted by: Anonymous on 2016-10-28
• score: 2

What those entrepreneurs mean is that when they started their start-up they already had a good reliable idea of who their customer is, and what this customer (or those customers) need. Then it is as simple as choose right technology and build a product.

• Analyzing the market assumes you do not know who your customer is, and what exactly you are going to focus on;
• Investigation of current needs assumes that you do not know your potential customer’s business, because if you would know it, you wound not need to investigate for it;
• Creating appropriate product assumes that you do not know which functionality your value adding product/service is going to fulfill and which customer’s pain point it will focus on.

And, logically, while people see you investigating these matters (because investigation will most probably involve interaction with people and possible stakeholders), someone who has better understanding of customer and specific business in overall will create their own start-up.

Thus, apart from full-cycle-marketing-research process above, there’re two more or less viable approaches (from my point of view):

• you know what you are going to do and you are sure you will be able to sell it. Then you just go and make a product agreeing with customer in parallel;
• you, now knowing about business much (but still have a good idea about it), start creating product you like and strongly believe it will be useful, make prototype and market it (similar to Sony Walkman approach).

Both approaches are having their own issues and prerequisites, and will mostly depend on implementation, business acumen and ability to quickly adapt for newly discovered information.

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