Startups Stack Exchange Archive

How do I choose a product to make in my startup

I always think about how to choose a product to make if I start a start up company. Is there any way to determine if a product might be good to make in the future?

What do people like me do?

Answer 5530

Edit: Since you clarified that you want to know about the product

Typically, how you select a product to make depends on several things

  1. Market gap - Your product must fill a need in the market that current products do not address adequately. You can find gaps from personal experience or through talking to people who use the product category. Your product idea can enhance an existing product category with new features, make it cheaper or make it more efficient at what it is doing. For example, web cameras are very standard today and have standard features. If you make an asic that enables web cameras to do something different say 3D or depth sensing, that can be a new product.
  2. Market need - Your product must be something a customer would need and would pay for. If your product is not very different from the competitors or has features that they do not really need then you would have a hard time selling it.
  3. Your startup’s capability - Sometimes even if you come with a new product idea, you may not have the resources to make it. Financial capability is usually a limitation for startups but there can be others such as access to manufacturers, raw materials or legal constraints. Assess your product idea against your resources to see if your startup can actually do it.
  4. Technical feasibility - Very obviously, your product idea must be technically feasible.
  5. Legality - Find out if any part of your idea has been patented. There are sites like patents.google.com or the USPTO website that you can use to search for patents. If a key part of your idea has been patented, you have the option of licensing and paying a royalty to them or changing your design so it does not infringe on the existing patent. Your country may also have laws governing your product category and have restrictions on capability that you may have to abide by.
  6. Cost feasibility - Your product has to have give better value to the customer than existing products. If you product features are same as the competitor products and you are charging more than them, then your product would have a hard time getting market acceptance. If your product has new features, find out how much the customer can pay for it, and see if you can make and sell your product for that price while making a decent profit.

So a good place to start would be to talk to people who might consume your product category. If you want to make asics, it would be designers and manufacturers of electronic products. Talk to them or observe the market to find a gap that you feel you can fill.

There is a discussion on new product idea generation on this page http://davidcummings.org/2015/05/25/new-product-idea-generation/

End edit

Assuming that you are asking which skills you need for a future in a startup ..

There are three options I can think of that you can use to enter into startups. One unique thing about startups is that since there usually is a resource/staff shortage, being able to wear multiple hats or play multiple roles is generally desirable. This is why early stage startups like full stack developers. In your case, the more you know about the full asic development process from creating design specs, rtl and logic coding, to floor planning and physical layout to chip production the better it would be.

If you want to simply work in a startup, then your present skills are fine. You just have to find a startup that is doing hardware products that require asics. There are startup specific job boards like startuphire.com, angel.co and ventureloop.com. Working in a startup as an employee can give you insights into how entrepreneurs manage their business, raise finance, prioritize decisions etc. Skills needed: hands on technical skills

If you have well rounded skills including product development and project management skills, you can try to join as a cofounder. Many business oriented entrepreneurs without technical skills seek a cofounder to help them make the product they have in mind. A technical cofounder typically should have hands on and at least some top level experience of designing a product and managing the development process. You can search for people looking for cofounders on sites like cofounderslab.com. Skills needed: hands on technical skills, product management skills, project management skills, delegating and supervision, outsourcing and integration, providing specs to manufacturers etc.

Finally you have the option of starting up yourself. You would need to come up with a unique product or service idea, raise finance and a team to market validate it, and produce it. The skills requirement would vary depending on the team you have. For example, if you find people to help you manage your product then you can delegate that. Skills needed: Business planning, operations management, people skills to network and build a team, financial planning, resources to raise finance. Going forward, you would find that you would need your technical skills less and business skills more as you can delegate technical work and you as the founder would need to making more big picture decisions.

You can also plan your career as an entrepreneur. You can find work in a startup as an employee and gain the skills needed to be a cofounder and then make the jump to a cofounder in another startup. There you can observe and learn the business skills your counter part has and build a network with investors and c level people. You can then choose to startup on your own.

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