Acquisition opportunities arise through design or by chance. As your company profile improves, bigger players may approach you if they perceive a complimentary relationship. That could be a large competitor, who has been losing key accounts to you. An OEM or strategic partner, who observes significant sales resulting from the partnership, may look for vertical integration. It is also possible to...
There is no magic formula for pricing a product. You can make a start by getting answers to these queries: Can you estimate the value to customer in terms of increased revenue or cost savings? How does your competition price their product? Should your product be priced higher/lower based on more/less capabilities? What is your total investment and annual expense (development, support, sales and...
Is there a right age to become an entrepreneur? Any age is a good age. The founders of Microsoft, Google, Facebook started their companies when they were very young. Steve Jobs, who founded Apple at an early age, continued to show amazing entrepreneurial capabilities in his second stint at Apple which began in his 50s. Young professionals in their twenties have amazing energy, and understand the...
Every engineer dreams of building his/her own product. Most ideas don’t progress any further, either because it was idle thinking, or on further reflection, they become less interesting. When a concept refuses to die, and you feel driven to explore it further, then some basic analysis must follow. What problem does it solve? Who benefits from the solution? Can you quantify its impact on the...
A product company can begin earning revenue only after the product is built. Significant upfront investment is required in engineering and sales. As revenue picks up, expenses continue to mount for ongoing development and sales, and for establishing a new support team. It may take years before the company’s monthly receipts exceed the outflow. This is known as becoming cash flow positive...
An important decision is about development and deployment platforms. If your product is targeted for a specific operating system, the choice is obvious. When the solution has to be platform neutral, or if the deployment will be controlled by you (SaaS model), then the common options are Open Source (Linux) and Java or Microsoft Windows. Always keep in mind the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for...
To position the product, you must first have clarity on the addressable market and its breakdown in terms of different industries or user communities (let’s call both of them as ‘verticals’ for simplicity). Then analyze which of them can benefit the most from your product, where your maximum contacts are, and which has the least competition. You can accordingly initiate preliminary sales efforts...
In this blog post, we discuss ways and means to reach out to prospective clients, position the product, license and price it. However, the question that founders must ask and answer convincingly to themselves is the one posed above. When doing this, they must think like a buyer and question every assumption about the product’s value. There are actually three parts to the question: Who is that...
The foundation of a product company is in its IP. An idea is only as good as its implementation. Start-ups face twin pressures of building the right product and doing it in time. The broad contours of the product may be quite clear, but specific features change shape regularly. Things happen simultaneously. While the product is being built, it’s being pitched to prospects, advisors and investors...
In addition to vendors of traditional on-premise products that are shipped or downloaded via web, a different generation of providers is fast emerging. They are leveraging new technologies and business models, often interchangeably referred to as cloud services, Web 2.0 or SaaS (Software as a Service). (Not all SaaS products are truly cloud based but the differences are not relevant for this...
