The first rule of fight club is…. 29 September, 2011

I often advise early stage entrepreneurs to check with real customers that their perception of the value of the product is correct. This means speaking to people. BUT how do you do market research, on your new product idea, without giving away the farm? It’s very easy to give a clue to a prospective customer that you are thinking about developing a product to solve a problem the customer has. This may not be serious at first glance but it is very easy for these customers to ask similar questions of their current suppliers. “What are you doing to solve this big problem?” or even “someone else has proposed a solution to this problem so you’d better hurry up…” are easy questions that can let your new idea leak out into the marketplace. When this happens you risk allowing another competitor with greater resources, funding or technology to catch up with your thinking.

So the first rule of Fight Club is…NEVER talk about Fight Club! What I mean is you must do everything you can never to talk about your new product idea until it’s fully baked. You have to do market research in a way that hides the true nature of your investigations, research a wider subject area with potential prospects, create situations where the answers to your questions come from the customer without prompting. I make it sound easy…I know…but that’s what real marketing guys do best.

So my first rule for Entrepreneurs is …. don’t talk about your new product idea.

Grev