What matters to any startup? The simple answer is presented in a game.
“All right, let us begin the game. Each team will receive all the materials needed to build a two-meter-tall paper tower within 60 minutes and then sell it to an investor who is also the customer.”
As soon as the task was announced, the teams quickly began. Some took 10 minutes to agree on what kind of product to make, while others needed 40 minutes to find common ground.
Time was up. Whether attractive or not, everyone had a product to pitch to their customers. The result was quite surprising: almost no team persuaded the investors, who were also acting as customers, to buy its product.
This story was shared by Phan Tuấn Anh, an innovation consultant and founder of Angel for us, a community of individual startup investors, during his talks on entrepreneurship and innovation in Hanoi, Đà Nẵng, and Ho Chi Minh City.
What went wrong in the story above? Why did customers not buy the teams' products? The simple answer is that the teams did not ask what kind of paper tower customers needed. They only built the tower they needed, or thought customers needed, when that was not actually the case. This was the teams' mistake in the game, and it is also a fundamental mistake behind the failure of many startups.
The basic lesson young entrepreneurs can draw from the game is to sell what customers need, rather than what you happen to have!
Clearly, this lesson is very familiar, so why do startups still so often make this mistake?
According to Tuấn Anh, many reasons lead to the mistake above, but they can be grouped into two main issues: not surveying customers, or conducting surveys incorrectly. Both result in failing to understand what customers actually need and, more importantly, whether they are willing to pay for the product.
The first problem is very common among young people, and the paper-tower game above is a specific example.
Regarding the second issue, drawing on personal experience, Mr. Tuấn Anh shared that many startups place too much emphasis on surveys using questionnaires with predetermined yes/no answers or graded scales. This method alone cannot fully express what customers truly think or expect. For example, the same question may produce two contradictory answers. Why? The survey cannot answer that question.
That is the theory, but reality is far more varied; let me offer an illustrative example.
A startup is building a mobile app that can help customers automate agricultural irrigation through connected moisture sensors. As water evaporates, soil moisture changes. Each crop needs a different amount of water, corresponding to a different soil moisture level. Based on this parameter, the sensors transmit data to the app, which automatically activates additional watering when moisture falls below the permitted level.
Clearly, this product helps users apply precisely the right amount of water, neither too little nor too much, saving costs and helping plants grow well. Its effectiveness is something everyone acknowledges.
So Will Customers Use This Product? It's So Good—Why Wouldn't They!
 |
|
Startups must sell what customers need, not what you have |
But are they willing to pay? That is another question worth considering. For many farmers, the app offers convenience and added value, but it is not essential because they do not lack water. Not using it does not impose a heavy cost. In investors’ terminology, it is not a ‘pain point’ that makes customers need the product.
How do you identify customers' pain points? The best way is to ask them, because no one understands them better than they understand themselves.
At an entrepreneurship session in Vietnam, Dr. Javad Kargar, a Fulbright Program expert and lecturer at North Carolina Central University, advised startups: “As a founder, even with thousands of things to do, you still need to spend 20% of your time with your customer development team meeting and talking directly with customers.”
Meeting and talking with customers is the best way to understand them. This is as obvious as “Sell what customers need, not what you have,” yet experience shows that the obvious is sometimes the hardest to do.
Collected.
>> Great Articles on Entrepreneurship
>> Success Energy Activation Course
>> Business Consulting Program
Chương trình liên quan tại YUP Education: X-Startup – khóa học khởi nghiệp «Khởi Chánh Nghiệp» · The Journey – lộ trình phát triển doanh nhân
