To Market, To Market, To Sell a Fat Pig
If you stay in the game long enough, you'll get market validation—well, feedback, anyway—but it may not be what you want to hear. The paranoid and deeply stupid will create a product in complete isolation and then roll it out expecting customers to beat down the doors in a buying frenzy.
Not bloody likely.
Heck, even movies and Broadway shows get market tested. You need to find out—as early as possible—if you've got something that solves a compelling and urgent problem, whether people will pay your anticipated price, if they can actually deploy and use your solution, who your sweet spot customer is… all kinds of important stuff.
It doesn't always have to be expensive, but it does have to happen. Not to get market validation—early enough that you can respond to it—is to court disaster. Just holding NDA informational meetings with key execs of companies in your top tier markets will start the ball rolling. Of course, if you're creating and selling consumer software, you need a more structured approach, like surveys and focus groups.
“But,” you might say, “what about 'ready, fire, aim!'? Isn't that the hot new strategy?”
Ready, fire, aim is about iterating product design quickly to respond to—wait for it—market validation. If you've got unlimited ammo, sure, fire all you want and see what falls out of the sky. But for most of us it's better to have a great target in the crosshairs.
