Imagine you develop a business idea or a product according to your ideas. The finished product convinces you and you bring it to the market, which naturally accepts the product positively. Sounds good right? “Build it and they will come” could be your motto, if you think so. But unfortunately, such a process is wishful thinking. With the procedure just described, you will unfortunately waste a lot of time and money, although everything could still go wrong in the end. We show you how startups are developed in cycles.
The right approach will save € 200,000 in time and investment
But as negative as that may sound, now the good news: There are safe approaches and ways to develop your business idea cost-effectively and effectively. In this way, according to Gründerschiff projections, you can save around € 200,000 in time and investments, and you end up launching a product on the market that will make you profit.
The secret is to validate your business idea. It always has to be adapted to the market and your target group. Rigidity and standstill are particularly dangerous when developing a business idea or new products.
Target group Research as a promising Tool for Startups
Instead of stubbornly developing your business model and then bringing it to market, you should use the powerful tool of target group analysis for yourself. That means you continue to develop your business model or product directly at the target group by adapting it. This is how you achieve results that are in demand and sell well.
It is ideal if you first take a defined target group and find out which problems, “pains”, they could have and what, conversely, their wish, “dream”, is. Then you should consider whether your business idea can solve these problems and fulfill their wishes.
So you should deliver the solution, the “fix” for the “pain” of your target group. You should always keep an eye on whether there is another solution and thus the better business idea. If this is the case, you should revise and develop your idea by adapting it to the wishes and needs of your target group.
Save Work, Time and Money by Developing a “Minimum Viable Product”
If you take the time to research and understand the problems of your target group, you can finally offer a minimum viable product, literally a “minimally viable product” (lean startup terminology) – and present it to the target group. This way you can quickly find out whether you have really found your target group and whether potential customers would buy your offer (product market fit achieved).
So you use the feedback of your potential target group to continuously optimize your offer. It is enough to present a rudimentary product that gives an impression of what you have in mind. This saves you time and money, as you will not develop a product to perfection that customers do not want at all. The aim is to develop piece by piece a model tailored to the target group. The MVP method follows the lean start-up approach.
Use the Lean Startup Approach for Business Model Development
Following the lean start-up approach can provide some security. The principle of lean start-up is that product or business model ideas should always be treated as hypotheses in the context of start-ups. These have to be tested and changed depending on the result. This means that every step is checked several times before the start-up moves on to the next phase. This way you can avoid investing time, money and effort in irrelevant activities and only concentrate on what really helps your start-up.
The Tech Startup School also follows the lean start-up principle, making it possible, for example, in just ten weeks:
- To discover a gap in the market with as little development effort as possible
- To learn a lot very quickly
- Develop a very early prototype
- Developing a business model from an idea
- And to approve and implement this for financing upon request
If this sounds interesting to you, you can apply for the next round. In the meantime we would like to invite you to learn more about Lean Start-up, target group analysis and the Tech Startup School.