Startups Stack Exchange Archive

Can we just build things we believe it’s great first then test the market later, rather than doing the market research first then building things?

I remembered that I read an article somewhere on the internet saying that Steve Jobs just builds things he believe it’s great first, then people will understand his products and his ideas later in a hindsight. The article also said that a lot of customers don’t know what they want until you said it (it = the thing that they will want) to them.

I think doing market research is only good for common business like restaurant or coffee shop. For these common businesses, you will sell the similar products to others but a bit different. For example, you open a coffee shop (that sells coffee like all other coffee shops) near station because you think people in station will likely to buy coffee and bring them to the trains. For this coffee shop business, you need to do the market research first to see if the business is viable before you actually start to set up your real coffee shop.

However, I don’t think we need too much market research for a Web Startup, because most customers don’t know your web idea. The customers need to use your website first, if they like then they will invite other people to use your website.

For a Web Startup, we just build our website first, test it out to see if people like it, then decide to stop it or expand it depending on the customer feedback.

For example, the guy, who made the Flappy Bird, just build thing he believes it’s great first then let the players to validate his idea. I don’t think he did any kind of market research before building the Flappy Bird.

Other example is that you build a moving vehicle that is completely different from any common vehicle like car, motorbike or bicycle. Your vehicle works like in a science fiction movie. So, apparently, no one knows your new vehicle and how it works until you show it to them right? So, in this case, you just build your vehicle first, then show it to the users. If they like your vehicle then they will tell others to buy yours and you can build up your customer base from that. Of course, you know generally that everyone needs some kind of moving vehicle, but you don’t needs to do the market research first before you build your product cos market research makes no sense or useless in this case.

So,

Can we just build things we believe it’s great then test it out in the market, rather than doing the market research first then building things?

Answer 1787

Building a website without asking customers what they need or want is really a bad idea and the reason why most startups fail. Market research isn't supposed to tell you what people want. It tells you what they need. Flappy bird is a lucky hit that failed at the end, so do not ever use that as an example again.

You have to know the needs of customers so you can produce a solution for them. Sometimes these needs can't be better satisfied without having a technological advancement before hand.

I want a faster horse with 6 legs = 2nd generation Ford car which is faster than a horse

Some customer needs are really obvious, I want to have more time, I want to learn faster, I want to go faster, I don't want to deal with this bs, etc.. But unless you learn why they need to learn faster and what they are comfortable with you won't succeed unless you are lucky. Would a customer be comfortable to stick a needle in their brain to learn faster? I don't think so. Find out what they need, why they need it, how will their experience be like, prototype, ask customers if it look cool, than start building a product.

Everyone knows that Steve Jobs had the biggest failure in tech industry, but he also had the biggest success.

You gotta start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and figure out where you're gonna sell it.

Steve Jobs
http://youtu.be/FF-tKLISfPE?t=1m50s

Edit:
Right now you only know what you can do. You do not know what is missing and what is valuable. If we only took the diagram below, you only have a 33% chance of success at the moment. For the other 66% you need to do market research or else you are only guessing and might fail.

enter image description here

Answer 1785

I think a better way to think about the question would be to see if you can fail fast. In the early days of a startup when you do not have any revenue what you have is the “learnings”. Any method which will allow you to learn quickly would help you succeed. In this context it is important to mention MVP or minimum viable product. If you can build something quickly which explains your idea and test it out with real customers there is nothing like it.

That said having an overall idea of the market is not a bad thing, it will help you weed out ideas that have a small market. If the total potential market size of your product is too narrow you cannot build a successful business out of it. In such cases it is useful to do a TAM SOM SAM analysis - https://www.thebusinessplanshop.com/blog/en/entry/tam_sam_som to estimate the market size.

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