How to avoid building the wrong product (and falling out with your app agency)
You launched it, it failed. You cried.
You’ve hired an agency to build your app. You’re 6 months into the build, and it doesn’t quite work as you’d hoped. It’s buggy, it doesn’t reflect your current proposition, but you go with it anyway.
You show it to potential customers. It turns out they aren’t interested - despite them telling you they loved the idea back at the start of the process (!)
You go back to the developers, you’re frustrated with the end product. They won’t respond to your emails - they feel like they have done their side of the bargain.
You look at it like it’s a failure or they’re a bit of a rubbish agency. You ask for the code and then it all turns just a bit sour.
Why’d it happen this way? You may have missed a crucial step. It’s a step that I bet the app agency won’t have spoken to you about.
And that’s validation.
Validation is all about understanding if there’s a market and customer base for your product or service, they’re keen to pay to solve their problem, and you’ve built enough traction to show some commercial interest. There are six ways to approach validating your startup or service.
It’s the step before traction; it’s the part where you find your market.
It’s the market that determines what feature you build, what channels you use, and how you fill an untapped market. It’s about breaking down your ideal customer, prioritising who to talk to based on their urgency to solve and the size of their wallet.
The main reason why many products aren’t successful is because they’re created in a vacuum away from customers.
Founders and business leaders start with the product, not the market or whether there’s an appetite to pay to solve the problem you’ve set out to fix.
Validation comes before go-to-market.
If you have no customers you seriously need to get on this. Pronto.
Every few months, I’m invited to talk about product market fit as part of startup accelerator programmes. We’ll get organisations within the cohort who tell me they have achieved it or are on the cusp of achieving product market fit.
They have a few paying customers but they spend most of their time wondering why retention is low and why it’s not taking off at the level their investors would really like it to.
When you lift the bonnet of these organisations, there’s a big validation shaped hole.
A small handful of people have told the founder their idea is great, the founder builds an MVP with next to no validation, and then the founder blames marketing or sales for being rubbish.
But let’s not look just at startups. Established businesses are guilty of this too.
Let’s say you have product market fit but recognise a potential market for a new addition to your offering. Just because you’re in a slightly more comfortable position to that startup doesn’t mean you can skip this part.
That’s because the way customers derive value changes. And if you’re introducing a new product into the mix, you need to understand where it sits.
And you know who else is guilty of this? Investors. Investors who hand over the cash but who don’t analyse the validation that’s happened (or not happened).
Why do people skip validating their product?
Two reasons, in my opinion.
Firstly, it’s hard. It’s long, it’s qualitative. On the surface, it looks like a nice to have - there’s no concrete hard KPIs to make your investor happy. You measure success or progress in customer time, small pilots - not cash.
And secondly, there’s confusion over where this process sits. Is it the founder? Is it senior leads? Is it marketing? Is it sales?
Let’s jump back to the agency who let you down and built a rubbish app for you.
Did you give them enough info? Probably not.
But did they ask for the context that your product is used to solve a problem? Probably not.
5 steps to increase the chances of your product working
I partner with B2B organisations, helping them to run process with my validation strategy services.
Before any engagement, I make sure the teams are aware they need to complete the following to help us on our path to validation.
Identify the problem you solve
Consider 3-5 segments who would make great customers
Write up 3-5 problem statements
Assess which audience resonates with which problem based on how urgent they are to solve the problem, how “easy” it is to sell to them, and how “easy” it is to implement your solution.
And get talking to these people!
Read this article for more info: Spending too much time tinkering with your product, and not enough time building market?
A case study: Edtech founder, Gem Hallett and the Skill Bursts game
One of Oh Blimey’s FAVOURITE case studies is the partnership between us and the Skill Bursts project. Gem approached me after realising she’d wasted time and resources building a version of her idea but had skipped the validation part.
This process helped her decide who to talk to, who to build focus, and gain more than just product insight - the info she gathered helped inform the sales and marketing down the line.
Read the case study for a lot more detail.
Summary
When it comes to launching a product, people always want to skip to the good part.
And the good part is where the money is coming in, right?
But if you’re serious about becoming investor-ready or want to avoid the risk of having to rebuild that app (or software or service) validation helps give you focus by listening to those who matter.
In the short-term, however, if you’re frustrated with your agency try this article on the playbook of working with agencies. It may help that headache!
