Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Not so long ago, being that I`m not a marketing person, I was really pleased to learn about the phrase "proof of concept." I knew what it meant, but hadn`t connected it with a lot of my other thoughts.

Bottom line: If you`re going to try to start a business that`s going to include other people, you`ll need to demonstrate a viable product before you wax eloquent about a big market. Although the market research is deeply important, it won`t matter much if the product you`re going to sell doesn`t live up to expectations, y`know?

So I`d say the first step is the prototype. :-)

By the way, which DOES come first? The chicken....or the egg?

I was just thinking that there`s another advantage to the prototype. It`s that when you don`t have a deadline in the sense of many orders waiting impatiently to ship a new product, you can make modifications. The first prototype likely will work, be pretty decent, and so forth, but as you "live with it," starting to test the market, you`ll see areas for change that`ll make it better. At the same time, you`ll be getting potential customer feedback, and you may discover you left out an important feature.

Most people (your market research interviewees) in my view tend to be better able to see what`s physically real than seeing the end product from a description, blueprints, or spec sheet.

Being a direct response marketing and copywriting consultant, I definitely warn against creating a product without knowing if you`ve got a hungry market. Seriously, you could end up falling in love with an idea that has absolutely no way working out. It could end up being a heart breaker. Before you invest your heart, soul, time and money, make sure you`ve actually got enough hungry people who want that. After you`ve established that, then I`d so go for it with gusto.

Enigma Valdez

Enigma, would you make a distinction between creating a product "run" versus a prototype? In other words, if you`re doing market research, it seems to me it`d be helpful to have an example or demo of the product, to give people a chance to say whether or not they`d buy "this" product, right?

On the other hand, investing the money and time to produce a run of maybe 5,000 of something that nobody wants would definitely be a problem. My thinking is that "proof of concept" refers to a one-off example. Oftentimes that could end up being fairly costly, depending on the nature of the product. But it`s still not the same as gearing up a production line and mass-producing the thing, right?

You should check into a focus group. Couldn`t we here at SuN be a focus group? You could also pull from Craig`s List.

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Colleen Dougherty Bronstein Designs
Sun Safe Designer Clothing
http://www.sunsafedesignerclothing.com
http://www.bronsteinartwork.com

Normally this question would be easy to answer, but since you are stepping into a fairly new realm, solar power (im assuming) and not everyone is hip to it since the government and big corporations have not completely caught on for obvious reasons (MONEY, is it cost-efficient to adopt it, google has because they are innovative and have deep pockets).

The answer is easy if you somehow improved a product and youre coming in to an established market to compete with similar products, but since this is not the case, it is good that you are getting advice. There has to be a certain amount of finesse you would have to have to deal with your sort of situation so you dont end up wasting a lot of money on a whole lot of nothing (if for some reason you spend a big chunk of money to develop your prototype and it flops). If you feel like the research you have already done still does not give you peace of mind on whether or not it will do well for people/small corporations/big corporations, I would definitely spend more time on research. If you feel as if your idea can be the next big thing and you know without a shadow of a doubt, or if you have peace of mind that you will get a decent amount of return on your investment, then I say go for it.



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TS Donnely
San Francisco, CA
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