Know Who is Going to Pay for Product Development
Find customers to pay for the product before you build it Today, we\u2019ll talk about product development for startups. In growing your business you must prioritize what products you develop. In developing a new product it\u2019s helpful to ask \u2018who is going to pay for it\u2019 before you spend money on it. The goal is to match the costs to sources. For existing product upgrades this could be current customers. They are ideal candidates for paying for the upgraded product. By surveying your current customers you\u2019ll get a better idea of what they need. In building new products you should consider finding anchor clients who will prepay part of the expense of the product development. If you can\u2019t find anyone who will pay for it, then you may want to reconsider building the product. Most startups avoid pre-selling a product because they think it will be too difficult. In reality it\u2019s about the same amount of work. There are benefits from working with customers in the product development phase. You\u2019ll learn the problem to be solved in a much deeper way. You\u2019ll learn what customers will actually pay for and you\u2019ll also gather competitive intelligence. Matching product development with customer payments keeps you aligned with the market. Thank you for joining us for the Startup Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding. Let\u2019s go startup something today!