1,2,3 Grow…
Having built companies for a few decades now, I have come to believe that there are three distinct phases to development.
Build your product - prove it works.
Build your company - The Validation Phase
Invest and grow.
I find that many companies fail because they attempt to skip the validation phase. In this phase, the approach is to define everything in your business and financial model that needs to be validated. Some examples are:
Can we sell the product?
Can we sell it into numerous industries?
Can we sell it for multiple use cases within the industry - within the same company?
Can we sell it through a channel?
Once that is answered, everyone get excited and thinks it is time to grow. Not yet….. Now the hard part - can we create a repeatable predictable and profitable process?
Recently, we started with a 1 year implementation process to as a proof of concept for a customer. While we closed the business - clearly that was not profitable and we certainly didn’t want to repeat that.
We revamped our approach based on what we learned, created a detailed project plan for on boarding and set a goal of 8 weeks to complete a proof of concept. While we didn’t quite make the goal, we completed it in 12 weeks, closed the deal, and made additional improvements.
On our third approach we hit it out of the park. With a modification to the sales process, the pricing model, the messaging, and the prototype, we were able to deliver a successful proof of concept within a week.
With this defined, it is time to invest and grow.