How Startups Fake Their Way To Success With a New Product
An honest strategy for faking your product until you make it what it was meant to be
Bringing a new product idea to market used to be an incredibly difficult and expensive proposition. That’s no longer true. In fact, there’s pretty much a script you can follow these days.
I’ve been building and launching new products for new companies for more than 20 years. I’ve been chewed up and spit out by the “raise-and-pray” product development cycle several times. I’ve also slogged through the slow growth process of reinvesting profits back into a product over a painfully long period.
The first startup I ever founded on my own, Intrepid Media, took three years to become profitable. My latest, Teaching Startup, was profitable in three months.
The difference is I figured out how to work backwards from my vision of a successful product — all the way back to the original idea — and fake each step until I hit revenue milestones.
Here’s a high level version of the fake-it-until-you-make-it script. It’s up to you to fill in the details.
