“Venture and burn the fingers” “fail, learn and grow” such phrases are stressful motivators that either bewilder the aspirant entrepreneurs to fall for the rat race, or curl them into the closet doing nothing. Though entrepreneurs are widely “categorized” as people with the guts to take risks, it should also be counted that entrepreneurship is not all about taking risks alone.
As is an idea, so is the question of investment. With huge avenues of funding available that tempt aspirant entrepreneurs to resort to one and plunge into action, it is essential to take a back seat and think. Because, to develop products, sell services or showcase anything with a price tag it is inevitable to be calculative, and develop product specific strategies to traverse the market and mint money. Here is Ries’ Lean Startup philosophy that offers inputs about strategically developing products based on certain tenets.
Eliminate wasteful practices and increase value-producing practices during the product development phase to succeed resisting large amounts of external funding, elaborate business plans, or the perfect product.
Acquire customer feedback during product development
Ensure that time is not invested in designing features or services that consumers do not want.
Instead develop features based on key performance indicators and a continuous deployment process.
Release a minimum viable product that is not finalized, to make use of the customer feedback to further tailor the product for the specific needs of the customers.