How To Develop A New Product From Scratch

hey in today's video I wanted to talk to you about how to develop a new product developing a new product is not the same as developing an existing product you have to take very different things into account when you are working with existing products where you already have customers that you have to make sure that you keep them happy that you're not losing them at least that you're not losing to many thing whereas when you are building a new product you Sant just have to find that allence for the product so includes things like micro

research and so on so let's get into it and let's go today into a deep dive of what creating a new product means or what are the aspects that you have to take into account when creating new products if this is interesting for you please comment below and let me know if you would like to have a follow-up video where I talk about how to develop existing products that have already customers so if you're new to the channel my name is Juan I have been working in tech companies for over 20 years now and I

have been in product leader positions like product director CPO and so on since 2017 and I have worked both with existing products and I have also developed new products from scratch so when it comes to developing new products that are going to be things that you had to pay attention to the first one obviously that you have to find a problem that users have you have to find an audience that people that have had that problem and eventually you want to create a profitable business and you cannot work on this alone you have to work

also with these potential customers understanding and build the product for them but let's go now through all the different aspects that are going to help you build a successful new product or as successful as possible at least take into account all the different aspects that are going to get you closer to build a successful product because there have been a ton of products out there that potentially we building or solving problems that people have which had not been successful so there's no real magic formula that is going to guarantee that you're going to build a

successful product but there's a steps and there are processes that are going to ensure that you are making the best that you can to build a successful product so now let's go through all the different steps that you have to follow first one probably is obvious to you but you had to find a problem that people have that your customers have whether your customers are consumers or their are businesses they have to have a problem you your product is going to solve that problem you have to validate that the problem is real that people have

this problem and that they actually need a solution and that they want to pay for this solution very important to make a successful business you can use things like surveys or Market studies to help you understand better if this problem exists and who has it together with this you have to make sure that you are defining the current audience of the people that had this problem who are those profiles those user person as those people that had the problem understand them really well this is part of your market research this is part of the validation

that is going to help you understand that hey am I building a product for software Engineers am I building a product for H Millennials am I building a product for people that lie to trouble whatever your product or the problem that you're are solving are you are going to be having different audiences then you had to start ID in a potential solution you are going to work mostly on your own but it's very important that if you have done your investigation if you have done your research on who those people are that are going to

have that potential problem let's say people that want to travel and you're building whatever is the product that you're building to help them through their travels a while they traveling probably is a better solution very well seen it but you're building that product to help them while they are traveling and you want to work with some of those people in that potential audience why because they're going to help you validate that the solution that you're building is actually addressing the problem is also going to help you validate if this is something that they would use

regularly if this is something that they are interested something that they would tell to other people and something that they may potentially be willing to pay for and you know how to work with many of then you have to find a few that you can work in a regular basis when you need to validate more in a in a more or in a wider way with a wider audience you can do surveys you can try to find in different social media groups for example in redit find groups that of people that like traveling and try

to potentially get like a survey where you could get information or you could get feedback on what you're building the next one is that you want to do a competitor analysis you want to understand what competitors are out there what are they doing who are the audiences what is the value proposition what is value proposition are is value proposition is the key value or the key benefits that their customers are getting from using that tool or that product you want to understand that very well because you potentially don't want to exactly build what they are

building because then you end up in a competition uh problem or a competitor problem where then is how do you differentiate where the question is about how do you differentiate from those competitors you want to make a product that is different that has what it's called a unique selling point that is different from the others that is going to out compete potentially those competitors and finds his own niche of customers that is actually solving their problems really well so now that you have done the planning phase of your product now you start going into the

execution now you understand a a bit better what the problem is what the potential solution could be who your audience is and what are the competitors now you are in the moment of starring the execution part of your product Santas also call as delivery or development although delivery is very often used also for the moment that you're actually delivering your product to the customers so now first thing that you have to do is start working on what's known as your MVP your minimum ible product meaning that you're going to work in a product that has

a limited set of features that is not going to do everything that it has to do actually to solve the problems in a let's say Production Way in a way that people would use it regularly but you want to build something that it test that your assumptions about the solution that you're building and the potential problem that you're solving or rather the other way around that your problem exist the problem that the customers have exist and they solution that you're building is actually the correct or is going in the correct direction this is what you

want to do with your MVP and you don't want to release your MVP directly to everybody you want to work with a certain audience there are different stages or different types of MVP I'll link a video up here if you want to take a look into what those are but with your MVP what you're going to do is build that initial product it's going to be a simple set of features that you want to work with those initial potential customers to validate that the solution and how you are solving that problem is the correct one

and this for example can be in the for that product for traveling uh people that who are traveling what the set of features it is I don't know exactly but basically you had to Define what is that initial feature set that your product is going to have and actually implement it and don't I wouldn't go into the finest implementation I will go with something initially relatively rough but that you can test with those initial potential customers you are not probably going to sell this pro at this point you just want to test you just want

to make sure that the solution that you're building is the correct one for the problem they have and that is going in the direction that they understand it you have to pay attention to a certain degree degree to product design how is the product going to work how the experience for the users is going to be even if it's still on the Rough Side so MVPs basically are a tool to validate Your solution whereas when you're doing micro research those are tools to validate the problem part of the build building the MVP what you're going

to do is prioritizing you have to prioritize all the different features that you think that your product should have you probably have a ton of ideas of things that you should have that are going to be super cool and very good experiences for your users in the long term hopefully you have them and once you have then you have to start prioritizing what are the things that you should do at the first stage what are the things that you really need to put in your MVP what are the things that will come later what are

those features that will come in later stages if you want to know more about how to prioritize go take a look at this video when you finish with this one but basically when you're prioritizing you what you want to make sure is that you are getting the features that are a must for your product that they're not negotiable that you need to have there might be some technical requirements that obviously you need to have and there's going to be also things that you can prioritize things like for example how much impact how much value this

feature is going to build or create for my customers how much versus how much effort is going to cost me to implement it once you do this you can start creating and developing a road map according to those priorities that you have set road maps something that is very important something that you probably are familiar with and you have heard about road maps are very important and something that you really have to pay attention how you lay them out because it's going to tell uh to your development team or to yourself if you are building

the product in which stages you are going to be developing different features of your product if you want to know more about how to develop road maps again I have a video about it once you have those initial MVPs that you have tested that your solution is good that is moving the right direction that is solving the problem that the customers up you have to start building the first versions of your product which probably are still going to be some kind of an MVP they're not going to be maybe yet the product or the official

product launch and here you have to look on as I will work typically is that I like to release this in a gradual way I don't necessarily want to go for a big launch I want to make sure that I'm facing the release of the product this can be done in different ways and by the way all the time you are developing and growing the MVP the features that are in the MVP is based on the feedback that you are getting from those testing groups that you have so my first testing group would be release

it to the small audience as I was saying in the previous STP uh once I get the feedback I potentially change the product based on that feedback I will move to the next one and here it depends on the product I would Define what are going to be maybe potentially the regions where I would like to release first first or where are the industries that I want or the user personas it depends a little bit on who you are targeting Industries usually use more for when you are talking to uh B2B user personas more when

you are talking to b2c so business to business business to Consumer again if you want to see a video I have one I will link it up there to understand the difference between those terms but the idea here is that well in in in B2B situations you can also have user personal so you might have a product that is for construction but sometimes is going to be for Architects and some other people like Engineers will need a different type of of feature set so you might want to release those products in in different phases what

you want to do when you're releasing this way is that you want to make sure that you're testing your product that you are getting feedback on that mvp that you have just released and that you are adapting the product sometimes the feedback is going to be completely negative is not what they expected it might be that they still had the problem but the solution is wrong it might be that the problem is wrong so you have to understand and learn from the potential mistakes that you have made and fix it and try to make sure

that the next iteration of the product is actually solving them maybe in a better way it's probably never going to be a perfect solution just think about products that are there windows or Google they have been in quite many years with us now and you could say that they are down but they're not down they're just releasing new versions all the time of those products they are doing maintenance they are doing updates they are doing whatever they are doing so those products are still Al and they are being developed there in the existing prodct development

I top you for another video but the idea of releasing MVPs and doing things like a testing potentially is going to help you to validate the assumptions and make sure sure that your product is getting more traction when you're releasing these first versions of the product even if you're still calling them MVPs or if you have done already an official product launch make sure that you are always doing in a way that you are iterating and that you are testing and that you are learning and adapting your product in a continuous manner meaning that I

release new version of the product I see the performance I potentially track some data or I potentially interview some C customers to make sure that it's going the direction that it should go and that it's getting interaction with existing users if I already have them and based on the feedback and understanding that has this feature actually fixed the problem or not or solve the problem that they have I will adapt if it solves it good I move forward if it doesn't solve it I have to understand why and adapt the solution or the product or

even potentially the problem that I'm trying to tackle the next phase and it's part of this iterative process is that you had to make sure that you identify what is known as the product Market fit but basically what it means in a nutshell to find product Market fit is that you have developed a product with a set of features in a unique design potentially that it's solving a real problem that a certain audience type of customers potential customers have and you are doing it it in let's not say profitable way but you are doing in

a way that you are creating a business impact meaning that you are selling your product to that audience it might be that you're not profitable yet because well companies go through very different uh life cycles but you want to make sure at least that what you have is an audience that has the potential of maybe growing or that your product has the potential of scaling up when it comes to the financial side of the product once you have sold this once you have found this elusive pro market fit you can start looking into the next

stages of your product it can be many different stages it will depend a lot on the company Philosophy and the idea what the company is doing the pro for and this can be things like a scaleup it can be a growth phase or it can be looking for profitability if this is a topic that you think I should dive into what is the difference between a startup scaleup a company that focus on growth and a company has focus on profitability let me know I will let you know uh I will make a video about it

and I will talk about what are the aspects that are more important for one of them versus the others let me know in the comments below and when it comes to do the development process to this execution phase there's going to be many different ways of doing this but based on my experience and because I have work in tech companies one of the most common ways of doing this is using practices like certain type of agile development it can be something like cang it can be something like scrum some people are going to be using

other things that are not aile for example waterfall something that it has existed for quite many years and you could argue that some companies uh not knowing their internal ways of working this is very true at least they look like they are doing in a more waterful way where they are not maybe Gathering the feedback from customers and they are not maybe working in that iterative way and they releasing the product very rarely there are many aspects of developing a new product that are going to be very important but they are not going to be

really that important in the very early stages of developing the product and let's I want to just touch on them quickly just to let you know that those are things that will come in time in some cases when you are developing a new product this can be more important towards the beginning and in some cases they will be more important to our later stages the first one is product quality um I'm not going to say that product quality is not important very obviously product quality is very very important you want to make sure that you're

building products that are reliable but while you are building a new product probably the quality of the product is not that important because you don't know if you're building the correct product yet you have to make sure that first you build the right product that you validate your assumptions then you can build the correct product let's say where you pay more attention to testing to automated testing to potentially even manual testing different types of testing that you have to do when you are building your product because you want to make sure that the product is

reliable that the product is stable that is not breaking that things that used to work stop working because these things happen so it's important that you add that layer of quality in your product something that potentially in some products is not going to be that important in the beginning in some other products it's going to be very important from the GetGo so you will have to if you are working for example with Automotive with uh pharmaceutical or uh not far well pharmaceutical obviously yes but also if you are working with um uh equipment that it's

for a hospital for example all these things re have very strict regulations and quality has to be taken care from the GetGo so you cannot you could potentially teste the ideas of your MVP but you canot release the product without having the quality so you cannot do those two things separate so in those cases quality very important from the get-go in other cases when you're building a product for uh I don't know consumers or even other Industries you might have something that it doesn't have to have the highest quality from the GetGo and you are

able to find better your pro market fit and once you find that market fit and you see that this is viable then you can start taking more care of the product quality a good example of doing this Tesla Tesla had let's say not a lot of problems but it has some nagging problems in the beginning apparently pel gaps is the huge the biggest problem that you could ever have in a pro in a car I would have never thought about that but hey for some people it's such enormous problem yeah yes I no I'm not

good at cars so don't come and tell me why you should care or not about panel gaps I only know that they don't look great that's the only thing I know there might be some safety issues maybe potentially I have no idea so don't don't bu me for this one but there there were other problems that they were having where the quality of the interior was not that great and that's something that they have improved over iterations you can see that the first versions of the model S or even the model 3 or the model

one why we're more like MVPs very working MVPs of a very high quality in many ways and quite reliable in many ways maybe safe maybe not that reliable in other aspects and something that it has been improved over the years is it perfect no no Pro no product is ever perfect and every product has to improve over time the next one that I would like to touch upon is that you don't need in the very beginning a full-fledged set of metrics you don't have to track your prodct every every single aspect of your PR again

this this is very related to the Quality tracking the pr is very important it's going to help you make decisions it's not necessarily a must if you're starting to go to a wilded audience then definitely yes if you're working in the beginning with like five customers just talk to them just much F much faster than trying to track everything once you start to go into releasing first versions of your MVPs or let's say Pro launch whatever you want to call it then you start to have to have a set of metrics that you want to

check to make sure that well traction is happening that the usage is happening that certain features are being used and so on and eventually of course you want to set up things like the r metrics you want to be able to track that acquisition activation Revenue retention and I'm forgetting one more referral I think so I have a video about it about them if you want to check and these are very important because they're going to help you understand better if you're your PR is going that direction of finding the pr Market fit something that

is very important again uh if you want to know more check out this video and then as I said earlier depends on the path of your product you have to understand if you want to focus more then on things like a scaling up on growth on profitability these are things that are not that important in the very beginning not when you are building a new product and you need to find that proct market Fe you need to find that there's an audience out there that cares about the product that you're building that they had the

real problem that they are willing to pay for it and that that audience is of a let's say significant size that I can create a business around this product until then looking for profitability probably is not very Point there's not much point because you don't know if you're solving a real problem something that you have to pay attention later so developing a new product it's quite different from developing an existing product um most of the people I know product people software people that I have worked with usually they have work in existing products but of

course many people have been working nowadays in startups that's usually the good very good example of working with a new product the way of working is quite different and this is why it's important to understand how to develop new products versus how to develop existing products because the focus is quite different the areas that you had to understand that you had to work with in a let's say daily basis are quite different an understanding of of research planning execution all these things are going to be slightly different you can still consider that every new feature

could be a new product that's true and it's a healthy way of thinking most of the companies don't do that and something that you can learn and something that you can adapt this model at when you are building new features try to be more experimental trying to understand better when you're building the new feature that really you are actually building it for the Right audience that you are solving a real problem that you understand who is this for this is very important and part of what many different models like kajal and others promote if you

want to know more about the whole product development process I will link here a video to for you to take a look if you enjoyed the video please give it a like And subscribe to the channel I will see you in the next one and remember stay safe