Creating a Business, not a Product.
Another week has gone by and I am chugging along with Sportycus. I got some more scenarios coded up this week although I am still behind schedule on delivering a working prototype. However, as I take the time to reflect on the idea of game data hosting, I cannot stop but think - am I creating a product or business? Good and Bad businesses provide great products. However only the good businesses with the great products tend to become successful.
The goal here is to make sure that I am not creating one of those businesses.
My history has shown me that I tend to focus more on creating web products rather than paying attention the business that will deliver the product. As I mentioned in a previous post - Are you also suffering from the “Entrepreneurial Seizure?” I had created at least one web product a year just to see them fail because I did not focus on creating a business. Part of the reason why I did not focus on the business aspect is plain simple - I did not know how to. Besides that though, I think the biggest reason is due to the fact that I am a just a geek who is infatuated with the Internet. Therefore, milestones and deliverables tended to be based solely on creating the web product - that was the exciting part. I need to overcome this tendency if I want to create a business and not just another web-based product that goes nowhere
A step towards this will be through the New Venture Lab course that I mentioned in a previous post. This course requires that I create weekly milestones for the next 10 weeks (the duration of the course). The milestones that I have set place emphasis on creating and launching the business. For instance, the milestones that I have set for this upcoming week are to:
- Finalize the Sportycus Business Model.
- Identify at least two marketing channels for the target users.
- Review and lock down the Sportycus feature sets.
This is certainly a different approach for me as two of the three milestones have nothing to do with the product - Hope it works!
