product, minimum-viable-productLet’s say I need a green envelope. I search and search the Internet and cannot find anyone producing green envelopes or producing them at the quality level I seek.
Since there are 6 billion people on Earth, there are high chances that there are hundreds of thousands people like me who are seeking the same quality of green envelopes.
Is such need a good idea for a startup product? Can I rely on my needs and billions of people existing worldwide to predict that such idea will not be a failure?
I know that hard work, marketing and other business stuff is important, but let’s put the aside for now.
At the risk of sounding trite, here’s a phrase to keep in your head:
A gap in the market doesn’t tell you there’s a market in the gap
In the past, the best approaches to testing a potential market were pretty expensive and time consuming. The good news is that today it’s all but free.
The cost of a great landing page is anywhere between zero (if this is something you know your way around) and not very many dollars (per page, if you make a few). And the great thing about a gap is that, if you’re the only place offering that product, the cost of being found is low, because by definition you’re not in direct competition with anyone else.
So if you develop a habit of responding to these gaps by putting up a good enough landing page, and spending a few hours each month looking for ways to find traffic, you have a low cost way to find which of these gaps could actually be valuable to address.
Short answer to your question - NO.
The fact you need something doesn’t mean others need it, but that’s just a glance at the problem. Ask yourself why is it not there yet? There’s a good chance a similar product was on the market before. Maybe demand was so low that companies decided to stop offering it. So first you have to make sure there’s a market for that.
Let’s say there’s market. It may be enough for your product, but still not enough for a new startup. Because startup is not about product, but making money. Ask yourself if you can make money with that.
The product has to make sense for you to make money. If everybody wants it for free or for less that it costs you, then there’s no point to proceed.
Now ask yourself how easy is it for a competitor with substantial market share and tons of money to replicate and even take your idea to the next level. Your idea of selling green envelopes falls under this category.
And I haven’t even started talking about ability to execute. You might have an idea of a green envelope that can hold a 100 pound weight, for which it needs a space grade material. So the idea could be great, but the execution made impossible for you or for anyone at a particular moment.
The fact that you can’t find this product anywhere means that, yes, there is probably a gap in the market. If it is true that no one is producing high quality green envelopes then you have an opportunity to corner that market. Now whether or not that market is big enough to sustain a startup is a fundamental aspect to this question.
Can I rely on my needs and billions of people existing worldwide to predict that such
idea will not be a failure?
Well, you can rely on the fact these facts to speculate that there is probably a consumer base. I wouldn’t rely on them as an accurate prediction of whether or not a startup would be a failure. Pitching your idea to people you know and really anyone you can find would give you a much better idea of what the demand for such a product is. From there you might be able to tell if the market is large enough to support your business. I personally don’t like to rely on too much speculation so I would say that: no, just knowing that there is a need is not enough information to predict whether or not your startup will be a success or a failure.
That being said, it is enough information to know that there is a market for your product. In order to determine whether or not the startup would succeed there are some factors that would be worth exploring. The big one I see here is your ability to reach customers. Plenty of startups with great products and a needy consumer base have failed because they weren’t able to bring news of the product to their consumers. As jdero brings up in his comment, how effectively you can produce the service, and how efficiently you can produce it are two more another important factors to consider. For your product to be successful you need to provide for the consumers need, and you need to do so in a way that is profitable.
I take data with a grain of salt because its all about how its interpreted. If you think the world needs green envelopes for x,y,z reason then go out and do it.
Just follow this principle.
If yes, are they around? Are they successful? If no (for both) find out why?
If Yes then go for it, if no then don’t do it.
The problem with many people in starting a business is that they think market data is the end all be all. Its not, its will, ambition, and the determination to initiate change.
Read about how Edison created the lightbulb it defies the mainstream fad that people will tell you today on how to build a business.
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