What are the most effective strategies for launching a new product quickly?

In my entrepreneurial experience, jumping into the real world worked I.e. go deep into the core of what your customers are doing & figure out why. Sitting in the office & running reports & numbers tell one thing, but the real connect comes on the street. In my edtech startup, Competition Buzz, I incorporated regional languages using this strategy. It was such a simple feature to have & none of the reports back then showed data that the gap is greater in non-English speaking. In a startup, execute fast, learn faster. Growth happens in this process. You learn more about your market & team. The jump from ideation to execution with trust comes with it. Trust that you have in your team & more importantly trust that your team has in you!

Figma is an outstanding tool for rapidly creating prototypes that a user can click through. These are visuals that, when stiched together properly can feel like a real digital experience. Spending a day building here can save many weeks of developmers time.

In my experience, huge part of the product success is by creating a product for a growing market. Of course, customer development and surveys are important. But I would recommend to start with the market analysis, which means: - Analyse competitors, their monetisation models, feature lists. - Subscribing to influencers and market analysis reports, such as Gartner. There's also a good idea to validate the market for B2C products before investing into an actual product development. Try to create a landing page describing a product values as you see them and create a CTA button with "Become a beta-tester" message. The amount of conversion will likely demonstrate the users' interest.

A/B testing at this stage may not be feasible, considering that you do not have a big enough user base. However, finding ways to develop your MVP / solution is important. You’d find real world examples of companies who’ve used digital forms and excel sheets to provide the solution & users have loved it. Many current companies use WordPress websites with loads of relevant plugins to build out a simple solution. The key here is fast execution as these products are easier to build & if something doesn’t work, your team’s investment is low & path alignment to market needs is easier. Execute fast & learn faster.

If you are a lean startup, try a low-code or no-code tool like Bubble, which allows for the quick creation of prototypes. Then, the team can test solutions rapidly and be less hesitant to drop them when unsuccessful.

Try to utilise the no-code platform and backendless solutions. You will have a clickable product prototype with minimum amount of effort. Not to forget - the product analytics integration, such as Firebase or Hotjar, to monitor the actual customer journeys and heatmaps. Remember: data is an essential input to build a product strategy and pivot.

From my experience, you need to have a really good luck to hit the market with first version of the MVP. So my advise here would be: save your resource, such as time and money. Make your MVP as simple as possible, keeping in mind that you will need to iterate at least 3 times more to find that market fit.

It is easy to fall into the trap of building the best possible version of your product for the launch. Everyone wants the perfect product. The real truth is that there is no perfect product. Take iPhone & androids and the apps in them as an example. There’s always a next version. There’s always things that one can improve. So, one needs to be extremely clear & mindful of what the customer wants. You can have an app that’s not good looking, but solves the user’s problems. It will be a 1000x more effective & loved than a perfect good looking app! That is why Jeff Bezos always kept a chair empty in his meetings to represent the customer (to keep the team’s focus aligned to the customer’s need).

The more users you can hear from, the better! Try getting in front of customers in different ways and times to create a constant feedback loop. Collect their thoughts, prioritize based on frequency and impact, and rapidly update the design and functionality until it is ready for a full launch.

This is true! Feedback & iteration essentially ties down to the my proposal to you that execute fast & learn faster. Keep iterating based on logical findings. See what the key metrics are for your industry & how do your numbers stand against them & why. This technique will let you know why you’re failing or succeeding. If you know the why, you can replicate the successes and avoid the failures.

Data, data and data only. During customer surveys all of your potential customers are truly motivated, but when it comes to taking out your wallet, there's always a reason why not to pay. Focus on those customers who generate revenue and their data - they are your real product indicator.

There's no silver bullet here, unfortunately. Otherwise would have been no failure products. There's a lot of information about product marketing on the internet. My advice would be is plan your marketing budget. Product development is only 20 to 30% of whole product budget. Marketing eats all of it, so use your budget wisely. Or hire a professional.

Launch is tough! Create a document. Even an excel document. Write down tasks that you think are important & needed for the launch. Share this document with each & everyone on your company. Ask them to add tasks to this launch planner that they think are needed. Let this document be an overkill. This overkill will ensure that you have all the ideas in that document. The launch has been vetted by your own team. Hence, greater trust and confidence is present. This maximizes trust & success. PS it is important to have a name and a due date for each of those tasks so that execution is enforced & your team avoids the “building the perfect product” trap.