The best way to start a business that works - mass testing

[MarkKol]

A brilliant businessman Daniel Priestley (more brilliant than most "business book" authors, especially those who talk about investing, useless bastards) 

Anyways, he has a brilliant way of testing business ideas, simply try to sell a service or product without having it in your hands or possessing the necessary skills to perform the service (or even having the money to invest in your product or service), you want to test for interest most importantly, in other words, you're testing for leads. The business world practically runs on leads, a lead is everyone who is a potential customer. How tangible is that? forget about making that website or investing thousands to get something started, first, test your idea for free, and see if there's a market for what you're offering.

If you've been running your business for years without success, as much as people might appreciate your hard work It's probably not going to work out. Most businesses that make money long term and survive long term, make money within their first few months or weeks. Including most technology giants we know today. (for these companies It's a little more complicated because they take on a lot of loss and debt, but either way they were making money, profitable or not within a relatively short amount of time, this approach should be applied to a company of any size)

If you read Steve Jobs' biography you might remember that him and Woz first made computers for themselves, and then for their friend group / neighbors. This is exactly the same thing! so In all honestly they could've been profitable with their first computer sold if they wanted (I don't remember if they sold it for profit or just gave it away)

I recommend watching every interview Daniel's done recently. Starting a business is not for the comfort seeking, stress free people, It's for people who are willing to take on stress and keep 1000 things in check. If you don't feel some sense of uselessness and lack of respect with a standard life or 9-5 this is probably not for you. The corporate ladder is probably a better option in that case.

Steve talked about a similar concept back in his days, I'm sure he would agree with this fast-testing method too.

 

[puporing]

Intuition helps a lot too. But ofc you can have fk'ed up intuition..

Edited March 12, 2024 by puporing

[universe]

This is common advice in marketing. And it's true.

There is nuance to this.

It's good for checking if the problem you want to solve with your business is big enough for people to do something about it.

Once you know that it is a big problem for people, then you can work on solutions.

Or you might already had "a" solution and just needed the right problem.

It also depends on whom you show your offer to (that's the next step, finding the right market) and how you present it (e.g. the copy).

Then you can use this technique again to check which product/service is the most wanted.

 

It is a very much client oriented approach.

[Amaresh Jha]

I know this post is a bit old but maybe someone will read this. Priestly’s concept of pre-selling before you asset-heavy your business is the only way to survive. When we got into the roll-off dumpster rental game, we didn’t drop six figures on trucks right away. We put out landing pages, hooked local contractors, got commitments, and then rented the fleet to cover the initial demand.

 

But here’s the second half of that equation: once you prove the market wants it, you will hit that exact wall of "keeping 1000 things in check" that you mentioned. If you don't scale your operations as fast as your leads, you'll implode. We avoided that by plugging our operations into CurbWaste the moment the concept was proven. It automated our dispatch, tracking, and invoicing instantly, turning that chaotic "stress testing" phase into a predictable, cash-flowing operating machine. Validate fast, but systemize immediately.

[Human Mint]

 

53 minutes ago, Amaresh Jha said:

I know this post is a bit old but maybe someone will read this. Priestly’s concept of pre-selling before you asset-heavy your business is the only way to survive. When we got into the roll-off dumpster rental game, we didn’t drop six figures on trucks right away. We put out landing pages, hooked local contractors, got commitments, and then rented the fleet to cover the initial demand.

Cool strategy.

Or in other words: market your hypothetical product, and produce it only when it has enough presales/hooked clients.