Of all the advice given to entrepreneurs today, one of the most common is to “fail fast.”
Entrepreneurs need to figure out their strengths and value to customers, but in doing so they will make mistakes, lose money and potentially go under. The end result (hypothetically) is that they will learn from their mistakes, discover their true value and build stronger, more successful companies.
Of course, while every company wants more time to discover their great idea, time is certainly not on their side. Customers will leave if the product isn’t what they need, and investors don’t want to see their money go to waste.
Fortunately, there are a variety of tools that young companies can use to identify what they’re doing right, what needs to change and what they need to drop. Here are 3 ways we can all fail fast with startup SaaS (and succeed faster, too).
1. Make Prototypes Faster
One tap early on for entrepreneurs is the belief that their product must be 100% ready when it hits the market. While the intention is good, what if the polished product doesn’t address their customers’ needs? Or what if the customer had it wrong and realize they need something else?
Well, you certainly wouldn’t know unless you tried. And by tried I mean prototyped something and put it out to market.
Creating Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) and putting them in front of customers for feedback can be an affordable and very valuable way to discover a company’s strengths.
2. Understand Customer Needs Faster
Before any company can drop a bad idea or product, it needs to be able to recognize what “bad” looks like. And we all know that, when it comes to our babies, we can be a little biased.
How do you identify your bad ideas? How do you know whether what you’re providing helps your customers? What if it doesn’t?
Marketing automation goes far beyond the email scheduling that most people think of. Monitoring inbound behavior is becoming more and more necessary. Tools like Hootsuite and Hubspot combine all social media and marketing efforts into one place for easy reporting. In other words, these tools make it easier for companies to identify sooner if their ideas are bound for failure.
3. Generate Leads Faster
Let’s say a company has pivoted their product or modified it according to customer feedback. Now those customers are loving what they’re paying for. How does the company expand their customer base? What if improvements to products mean a possible expansion into a new market segment?
Before a company can turn leads (especially from new segments) into customers, it first must show the value it offers. Again, programs like Hubspot can track metrics such as when emails are opened and which blog posts drive the most traffic. This will help determine if visitors are worth pursuing or if a different, potentially new market segment is coming instead.
4. Pivot Faster
Last but not least, we should never keep our eyes on the prize — not if it’s the wrong prize.
Pivoting is a crucial survival skill for all startups, which is why companies like Lean Startup Machine have made it their mission to help startups fail faster with minimum viable products, and platforms like Javelin’s QuickMVP encourage entrepreneurs to do just that.
Fail fast with startup SaaS
For a great resource on how failing faster and pivoting have helped entrepreneurs not only survive disasters but succeed beyond their wildest dreams, check out Eric Siu’s blog on GrowthEverywhere.
What’s your “fail faster” advice for entrepreneurs? Let me know in the comments below.
