- Don't write the code.
(upbeat music)
How to test your software idea without
writing any code whatsoever.
Maybe you've already started hiring a developer.
Potentially you've built the product already in the market.
Or maybe you don't even have an idea but
you don't even know where to start.
I'm going to share something in this video that's gonna make it
ridiculously easy but I know right off the bat you're
thinking, "My situation is probably a little different,
"Dan and I don't know if following this advice is gonna
"work for my specific situation," and I'm begging you,
I'm pleading with you, please listen.
Just try it.
I can't tell you the amount of entrepreneurs,
hundreds of entrepreneurs that come to me after they've spent
months, years, hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in
building a product that nobody wanted.
What I'm to show you is a simple framework that's gonna allow you
to build something that the customer absolutely wants.
You can't mess it up.
If you follow this process, it's guaranteed.
Right, you're gonna do it in a way that's gonna get the
customer to finance the development.
It's called customer financing.
It's not venture.
It's not angels. It's not friends and family.
It's actually getting the customers to finance it and it's
going to make it easy, okay?
So I want to deconstruct a few my companies first
so you have some context.
When I was building my company Flowtown we were a venture
backed software company but before we ever raised money for
that product, we were a social marketing application,
was we tested it.
We actually built a fake interface.
We actually like, I called it Wizard of Oz it.
We created three screens.
The first screen was upload your email addresses.
The second one showed a result of those emails analysis and the
social media data that we had on all those emails.
And then the third screen prompted for payment.
Now here's the crazy part.
When you submitted payment details on the third page we
didn't collect a credit card and we just said to you,
"Oops, our servers are overcapacity.
"Our bad. Please come back in the future.
"We've collected your email.
"We'll send you an email when we're ready to go."
What that allowed us to do is test the idea with
real product that was fake.
We actually didn't build anything.
Real customers that threw down credit cards.
We just didn't collect their credit card and we saw the
conversion rate from invite in regards to what they thought it
would do, what information aggregated view they saw and did
they have enough interest in going forward.
So that's one example.
My next company, Clarity, was a marketplace for entrepreneurs to
get advice over the phone from other entrepreneurs in real time
and what we did, what I did to test it in the early days
was real simple. I used three technologies.
One, I found an expert.
Somebody that can give SEO advice that people knew of,
that was notable. Guy named Neil Patel.
Really expensive, so this is actually a funny story.
I emailed Neil, I was on Skype chat,
and I was like, "Hey Neil,
"how much would you charge for SEO advice?"
Thinking like $500 or something like that.
And he's like, "$2,000 and truthfully I don't even do it
"anymore outside of private equity companies because they're
"usually gonna then put me on retainer," and I'm like,
"Okay, good to know."
Now, why was that important because before writing any
software, I started to understand the pricing dynamics
of the experts.
If you think that, you know, a certain type of person's gonna
use your platform and you reach out to them and they'll say no
for a reason you learn more about it.
So I had to find people that were priced appropriately.
So I found some expert that had blogs that were pretty well
known and they are willing to do for 500 an hour.
Then I reached out to a bunch of startup founders that I knew had
kind of marketplace-type dynamics to their product,
content marketing, and I said,
"Hey, would you pay $500 to talk this expert?"
And they said, "Absolutely."
And I was no problem.
I coordinated the call using Google Calendar,
no tech, and 1-800-Free Conference Call.
Free conference call, Google Calendar,
locked and loaded, tested with money, PayPal.
That's what I'm talking about is being creative about how you
kind of test your idea.
But I wanna walk you through a very specific way
that I think's even better.
So there's three steps to testing your software idea
without writing any code.
One is building a clickable prototype.
Here's the way to think about it is you wouldn't build a
skyscraper, you know, a $100 million skyscraper without
building kind of a miniature version of that skyscraper to
see kind of like how does it sit on the land and how people
interact with that and kind of the dimensions and whatnot.
That's the same thing for software.
So what I recommend is using a tool like Keynotopia that you
can download and use Keynote or maybe use PowerPoint
and create clickable screens.
If you can draw a square box, you're good to go.
'Kay, that simple and you just say,
okay well somebody logs in here, and then they go to this area
and they create this thing and then they have the results and
then there's a dashboard and you just create the simulation of
how the software will work.
If you want to get fancy, and I don't recommend it,
there are other products out there like a Balsamic,
like a UXPin, like InVision app that allows you to create almost
pixel perfect simulation of your prototype.
Now, here's why I don't recommend those is because when
you show them to customers for feedback,
they might be a little hesitant to give you really honest
feedback 'cause they think like,
"Oh, you already built this.
"I don't want to hurt people's feelings," you know?
I highly recommend that if you want,
you can use a clipboard.
This is what I used to do early days.
When I was in my early 20s, clipboard, piece of paper,
big sharpie marker and I would draw it and I would go to the
mall or the farmers market or whatever your ideal customer
hangs out, okay?
So you just big squares and it sounds stupid but I'm telling
you the entrepreneurs that are willing to do that are the ones
that are going to be successful.
If you think that that's above you and that's hokey pokey and
you don't want to do it, trust me it's gonna be a shock to you
when you finally have to go out into the world and actually sell
a product that is probably not really where it needs to be.
So that's one
is build a clickable prototype of your idea.
The second thing is find the early adopters,
'kay, and the innovators.
There's this thing called the technology adoption curve by
Jeffrey Moore and it talks about the different phases of
technology adoption and what I've seen most entrepreneurs
starting often failing at their software do is they go for
feedback from people that aren't early adopters.
People that are what's called the early majority
or even worse the late majority.
If you live, here's the deal, if you're building a restaurant app
and you live in a town of 100,000 people and you think
that there are restaurants that are early adopters,
you're probably misled.
In small towns there's not people innovating
and pushing the limit.
I remember a long time ago a friend of mine came and he's
like, "Hey, I've got this idea.
"There's these new things called iPads and
"I want to build an app that lets people order their
"food from the table, from the iPad."
And I was like, "Cool. Go talk to potential customers."
And the challenge is that they went and talked to people in
their own town, that were not early adopters restauranteurs
and all of them said, "Customers will never do this.
"It's about experience.
"Never work, never work, never work."
So they stopped.
The challenge was that they didn't think about,
okay, what are some of the characteristics of
an early adopter customer?
Where did they spend time?
What do they look like?
Maybe they're using Snapchat for marketing.
I mean that would be a clear characteristics.
If I find a restaurant that used Snapchat then I'd be like,
"Okay, they're early adopters."
Back in the day it would've been
have Facebook page, right?
Maybe they're using Facebook messaging for marketing.
You're gonna have to figure it out for your context and your
time in the world, what is it that gives you inclination that
that type of customer is an early adopter,
is an innovator, progressive in their thinking,
willing to try and adopt new technologies?
Once you have that, then you use those people to validate your
clickable prototype.
And then the third thing you want to do is pre-sell it.
Pre-sell your software so that you're not building for three,
four, five, six months, spending tens of thousands of dollars on
a product and then finally showing it to the customer for
them to say, "That's really cool but it's really not gonna meet
"our needs 'cause it's missing this one thing."
You know the unfortunate situation is that most
potential customers giving you feedback
when there's no financial commitment,
they're just being nice
and I can't hold them against it.
If you're an entrepreneur and you're passionate
and you're excited about what you're building on,
the last thing they want to do
is be the person that busts your bubble.
They don't want to say it's a bad idea.
But I will tell you this, everything changes
when they give you a dollar. Okay?
Once you ask for a dollar, I don't care if it's 1,
10, 100, 1,000, soon as you ask for money everything changes in
regards to their thinking around
your product and what's required to actually meet their needs.
If they're gonna exchange money then they're gonna start saying,
"Well, does it allow me to invite my team?
"How do I collaborate?
"How do I pull a specific report?
"If you're making me, if you're asking me to use this to run my
"Facebook ads, what's the report I'm gonna see to know that
"I'm getting a positive ROI?"
Whatever it is, as soon as you ask for money that's when the
customer's gonna get clear of what they need and give you very
what's called true customer validation.
Most people think they're doing customer validation,
they're not.
If you don't ask for some kind of commitment,
either major time commitment and/or a financial commitment,
the feedback is not validated.
Now, here is the that the myth.
Most people say think, "You know Dan,
"my situation's different. I can't presell my software.
"There's no way a big company is gonna give me money for
"something that's not built."
Here's why I know that that's just absolutely not true.
I built a consulting company, Spheric Technologies.
I worked with innovation departments inside of
Procter & Gamble, Dole Foods,
Johnson & Johnson and here's what I learned.
They were willing to give my company money to build
innovation, to build custom solutions,
to build software and had there been a product off-the-shelf
that delivered the solution to the problem they had,
they would've bought that versus asking us to build it.
Anytime people say,
"Well, my situation is different."
I say, "No, it's not."
If there is a company out there that you can see doing something
similar to you but maybe just for them,
for their business, that means that they thought enough about
having that problem solved that they were willing to invest and
have a company build a custom solution for them which means
they would've paid you upfront for your solution.
They would've want to help you co-create it especially if you
show the mockups, you can work with them,
you put them part of the customer advisory board and that
is how you validate your idea, you get pre-sales and you ensure
you build the right products.
So, real quick, make sure that you create a clickable prototype
to get real feedback, find the customer that's an early adopter
and third, get in the pre-buy your software.
I hope this video finds you incredibly well
and I'll see you next Monday.
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