By
James Breiner
When you are starting out with a
digital product, it makes sense to get advice from experts. But experts can't
help you learn as much as you can on your own.
In fact, most of the successful digital
entrepreneurs I know give the same advice: develop a prototype as
quickly as possible. A business plan or a powerpoint is fine, but you need to
put your actual product into the hands of the public and test your theories.
See if they work.
(See the comments of Olga Lucia Lozano, Daniel Eilemberg, Gonzalo Costa, and, in
Spanish, Leo Prieto, Gumersindo LaFuente and others.)
The thinking of these entrepreneurs has
gotten its most eloquent expression in Eric Ries's book The
Lean Startup. The idea is to save time and money on product
development by introducing a minimum viable product to
the target customer, measuring response, making adjustments, and trying again.
(Some examples for journalists are below.)
No business plan for uncertainty
Developing a minimum viable product
makes sense for a startup, Ries says, where the entrepreneur is working in an
environment of extreme uncertainty and there is no proven business
model. A business plan is so theoretical that it doesn't make sense.
Big media businesses don't like to use
the lean startup process because they are worried that a poor product will
damage their reputation with consumers. So they test products and names and
packaging on focus groups, do extensive research, spend heavily to market the
new product, and then hold their breath. Remember those words: extreme uncertainty.
Despite everything, many product launches fail.
Ries and the practitioners of the lean
startup strategy do their testing in the marketplace itself, online, where they
get the most honest market research possible -- actual customer behavior. Each failure
is a learning experience, which the entrepreneur uses to adjust the product's
pricing, positioning, delivery (that is, they pivot ), and test the
response again. Ries calls this validated learning.
Google’s original product was a simple
search box, and the developers apologized, Ries tells in a video presentation.
Google promised it would develop an entire portal later. But the minimum viable
product -- embodied in a simple page with a search box -- turned out to be
Google's best product, and they haven't changed it much.
The worst that could happen
For would-be news entrepreneurs the
message is to test your concept online. Your problem will not be that any flaws
in your product will be ridiculed and will damage your reputation. Your problem
will be getting anyone to look at it in the first place.
Let's say your theory is that people
want more news about the independent music scene in your town. The only
way to find out is to start publishing about it on a blog or web page (a
minimum viable product), tell your friends and acquaintances and the community
at large about it (social media), and make sure people can find it (search
engine optimization).
The worst that could happen? Nobody
cares. Then you can modify the product and keep trying until you prove that
there is (or isn't) enough of a market to make your work worthwhile.
On the other hand, you may have a post
that goes viral and crashes your server because you weren't prepared. In either
case, you have gained some validated learning you can use to make
adjustments to your product or service.
For journalists, a minimum viable
product can be as simple as the headline on a story. If the best investigative
story on your website is not getting any traffic, try another headline, try
adding a graphic, try adding photos, change the display, change the position on
the page. Try something, and measure what happens.
Metrics aren't tool of the dumb
Many journalists reject the value of
metrics. They hate to see editors judge their work merely by page views. They
see metrics as a vehicle for dumbing down the product or pandering to the
audience. But look at metrics another way. Look at them as a way to find out
what is capturing the attention of your target market. Use metrics to make sure
your best work is finding an audience.
Ries tells in his video how he failed
to use a simple metric with his startup and learned a hard lesson (thanks to Miranda Mulligan of the Knight Lab at
Northwestern University for introducing me to this).
He and his team of programmers had
poured all their energy into developing a product that would integrate all of a
person's instant-messaging services in one place. And after six months of
intensive coding and whiteboarding of strategy using all the best practices of agile
development, they launched the product. Nobody would download it,
even though it was free. They had to throw out all six months of work and start
over.
What we could have done, Ries said, is
simply set up a page with a button inviting people to download the described
product and gauge the response. They would not have had to develop a product.
The second page could have been a simple thank you for responding and a promise
to deliver the product as soon as it was ready.
I recently saw a good example of this
form of response testing with an application I use. It announced a new expense
report format and new pricing, and I signed up. Here was the response:
"From: David Barrett To:
jgerardbreiner@yahoo.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 4, 2014 8:58 PM
Subject: [Expensify] Realtime expense
reports phase one: Major price simplification, reduction
Wow, there has been an incredible
response to my last newsletter announcing the realtime expense report beta. So
many thousands of responses that I wasn't able to reply to them all. I really
appreciate your patience as I gradually work through the backlog of responses,
and as we roll out realtime expense reports in pieces. I think you'll find it
worth the wait."
He puts a positive spin -- what an
overwhelming response! -- on the fact that he can't deliver because of a
backlog. He has tested a theory. He has a database of people who say they want
the product. Now he knows that he should invest some time in developing it.
Many would-be digital entrepreneurs ask
me for advice on a variety of issues, from which content management system is
best to which social networks they should be using. If I know what the experts
are saying, I will share that.
But ultimately, I tell people, you need
to find out for yourself. The road ahead is not clearly marked. Remember,
establishing a startup means dealing with extreme uncertainty about which
direction to go. You will need to plant your own milestones. You will have to
find your own way. Therein lies the pleasure and the pain.
This post originally appeared on the
blog News Entrepreneurs. It is
published on IJNet with the author's permission.
James Breiner is a consultant in online
journalism and leadership. He is a former co-director of the Global Business Journalism Program at
Tsinghua University and a former ICFJ Knight International Journalism
Fellow who launched and directed the Center for Digital Journalism at the University of
Guadalajara. He is bilingual in Spanish and English. You can follow
him on Twitter here.
Image CC-licensed on Flickr via Heisenberg Media
Source: Ijnet.org
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