I’ve been involved with building countless software products throughout the course of my career and I’d like to take you behind the scenes a bit so you can learn more about how it works for your own benefit.
I’ll start with a simple question – do you know how we budget for a software product build?
Well, first we measure to the T exactly what we think it will cost to build EXACTLY what the customer wants, then…we triple it. That’s right, we triple it!
Why? We triple it because of something called scope creep. Scope creep basically means that the customer changes their mind throughout the build process which extends the timeline and significantly increases the budget.
Perhaps the next most relevant question is why does this happen? I would argue that it happens because they don’t really know what to build. They are floundering back and forth thinking that it’s how the process works…spoiler alert – it’s not.
Get our awesome product content delivered daily-ish to your inbox
So even if the product eventually does get built, it’s unlikely to achieve product market fit and won’t help you succeed.
Instead, what I want you to realize is that when you’re ready to build software, you’ll know it. You’ll know it because you already have a process that is achieving consistent results for your customer. These results can be provided to your customer as a rinky-dink prototype that’s cobbled together or (even better) a productized service.
Once you’ve validated your value proposition, you’ll know exactly what to build AND what NOT to build.
The software version of your product will help you reach scale, but not before you validate your value proposition.