10 ways to know if your product idea is worth pursuing
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 เม.ย. 2024
- Get your free Ultimate Guide - How to Develop and Prototype a New Electronic Hardware Product: predictabledesigns.com/guide
And get your other free guides:
From Prototype to Production with the ESP32: predictabledesigns.com/esp32
From Arduino Prototype to Mass Production: predictabledesigns.com/from-a...
From Raspberry Pi Prototype to Mass Production: predictabledesigns.com/rpi
Prevent mistakes by downloading my DESIGN REVIEW CHECKLISTS for the schematic circuit, PCB layout, and enclosure 3D model design: predictabledesigns.com/design...
Want my personal help on your project? If so, check out my Hardware Academy program: predictabledesigns.com/Academy - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
That's actually a really good list! Just made me change a few things in our business plan.
I'm loving your videos. Thanks for all you do!
Thank you for sharing that! Glad you are loving them:)
Thanks mentor, glad you are doing this
Thank you!
EXCELLENT EXCELLENT EXCELLENT. Thank You Sir
Awesome! Thank you, glad you liked it!
Thank you very much. I am in the middle of this journey right now. I just launched a beta version of my product in a small market. And I think that was a good idea. I'm getting a lot of feedback, but also a good amount of orders to fulfill. Your tips on pricing are spot on. I figured I was all set for everything, but I'm still going to sell my first batch for almost no profit because things change, suppliers don't deliver, etc.
That's great to hear that you've beta launched in a small market and that you're getting orders! That's the right way to do it:)
Selling first is always the best, lowest risk way to go!
Thank you! Great information, however, I'm surprised that you didn't discuss the issue of patents. Researching if someone has already patented an idea is time consuming, and going through the patent process can be expensive. Should I attempt to produce and sell a new creation without knowing if someone has already patented the idea?
Thank you! I rarely see an existing patent that can't be worked around. Most parents are quite narrow and infringement can be avoided usually with a design change. I think researching actual competing products that really made it to market is more useful. While I think parents are important I think most entrepreneurs focus on them too much.
Yes sir Thank You again @23sike24
Great list for forcing us enginerds to embrace the business / marketing parts. Yes, plastic parts are hell - simpler tools, smaller parts and getting it right the first time is the fastest / cheapest but it is still the slowest and most expensive part to iterate changes on. Software is the easiest and it distorts expectations!
Thanks for the comment! Yeah we enginerds like to focus just on the technical aspects. That's fine when you work as an engineer for someone else, but obviously not if you want to build your own hardware business:)
@@PredictableDesigns Do you have any horror stories of working with companies that had primarily a software / SaaS business and thought they could just jump into doing something hardware also? There was one we worked with from years ago that was a mess, and we were helping with the 2.0 version of the hardware / firmware platform!
I'd love to hear your thoughts about when a product should be considered a failure or not feasibly profitable. If you move 1k units in, say, 6 months, all at a loss, do you keep going? Numbers are made up but I'm wondering at what point an entrepreneur should cut their losses.
Great question! I'd say it depends on how you sold them. If these were sold in retail stores then your most important metric is reorders.
If you sold these online, then the question becomes can you find more customers?
Are customers happy with the product? Why do you think it took 6 months to sell 1k units?
The truth is the problem could be your marketing or sales strategy, and maybe nothing to do with the product or whether customers like it.
Almost every single entrepreneur I've worked with underestimates the challenges of marketing and sales.
Love your tips, thank you for your videos.
I developed a few products, for internal use in a company, as an employee, I'm now going solo and I see that I can develop things for more than just one company. I'm ooking to sell it online so I can reach more countries, but everytime I'm thinking if its worth it I always come to the conclusion "as soon as this is online what stops China from copying it", back in my old job we didn't sell so there was no copying, but they are pretty simple to develop and code, a look inside and its easy to copy, specially because I believe in developing things that can be repaired some decades in the future, I will only keep the code closed source but will alow the download and replacement of the binaries (and also the behavior is easy to mimic and do the code from scratch).
Kinda lost on this, right now I'm just yoloing it and burning throw my savings just for my personal satisfaction of saying in the future "I did try it, dont care if it failed and I'm back to a office job".
Thanks for sharing your concern, which is a very common one I hear.
First of all, no one steals unproven ideas. Instead they wait until it's a big success then they copy it. But by then you have a headstart.
Chinese companies are great at manufacturing, and they're just okay at innovation. But they are utterly horrible at marketing and sales.
They can't sell anything in western countries without others doing the selling.
For example, I get dozens of cold marketing emails every week from Chinese companies trying to sell me services or products. You know how every single one of them starts? They all start with "Hello dear" or "Hello my friend". Then they only get worse from there. They're clueless about marketing to the US and other English markets. That's your big advantage even as a small company. You could give one of those Chinese companies a million dollar marketing budget and they'd just send even more spammy "Hello dear" emails.
This is why execution is more important than the idea. You have to just out execute everyone else.
Finally, you might consider a patent, or at least file a US Provisional Patent Application.
Hope this helps.
Great video. I am working on my second product after a lackluster first product. But the customer base for #2 is municipal clients. But the product is a completely new solution with no competition.
Of course I feel like it's the greatest product in the world but is it worth pursuing? I love to be able to have a talk with you if you can.
Thanks for the comment! I'll be happy to take a look at your product and share my thoughts with you if you join my Hardware Academy program.
predictabledesigns.com/academy/
Well. What I'm prototyping is definitely a niche. It has a known problem and the "competition" currently has a monopoly and charges $14k where I estimate manufacturing costs to be around $2k so plenty of room to compete on price.
I put competition in "" because they do size a and I will be doing size b. No one is doing size b but people want size b.
Sounds like you found a potential nice hole in the market, great job and good luck!
Love your TH-cam photo, I'm huge fan of Albert:)
Sir 🫡