Getting started

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To be clear, this is not “Academic Research”.

The research you will be doing here is the same kind of practical and useful research that has been a part of your daily life almost forever.

Secondary Research: You go online and look for available phones and compare their features, warranties, and prices, etc.

Primary Research: You will most likely talk with friends, family, and colleagues about their phones—what they like and don’t like.

At some point you will feel that you have enough information to make a decision.

These are the same reasons for doing Primary and Secondary Research before you make a decision to launch your business—minimizing your risk of failing and maximizing your potential for success.

As you research and test your idea with real people, you will likely learn ways to modify and improve your idea from them.

Right now, you have an initial prototype (a picture or sketch of your idea) plus a clearly written description or explanation. These will help you to introduce your Value Proposition to potential customers and industry insiders and start getting feedback and ideas/suggestions for possible improvements.

However, before talking with people about your idea, let’s first do some Secondary Research to find out what’s going on out there in the marketplace where you will be operating your business.

This will prepare you to be able to get the most value out of your Primary Research later.

If you are a good organizer and already have your own system for filing and retrieving information, that’s great. If not, then you might start by creating three folders on your computer (or on Google Drive, if you prefer):

We’ll add a couple more folders later on. During your research, save any notes you take (in a Word Document or Google Doc, for example) in the corresponding folder to help organize your work.

We are not trying to become experts with this research—that would take forever—but we do need to be informed enough so that we can apply good judgement and make sound decisions.

“Just enough” will be somewhat subjective, but by following this process, you will be able to assess your level of confidence pretty accurately as you go.

When you begin actually talking with potential customers and industry insiders, you will need to demonstrate that you are serious and sincere.

In the beginning, the best way to do this is by showing that you have put some effort into understanding the industry, the companies who are already operating in the marketplace, and the customers and their problems.

In order for people to trust your seriousness and sincerity, you will need to be able to show in your conversations with them that you have some knowledge of what you’re talking about within the context of the marketplace.

Another reason for spending a little bit of time, early on, learning about your industry, your competitors, and your potential customers, is that when you do move on to interviewing people in your industry, you will be able to follow these conversations more easily.

Most industries have specific “jargon” and terminology that will be helpful for you to recognize and understand. During your initial Secondary Research, you will begin to discover these industry-specific details.

We’ll talk about this situation in the next module, after you complete your initial Secondary Research.

For now, you just need to get familiar with the industry that you will be operating in. You need to gather enough insight and knowledge to confirm that this is where you want to be, and that this is a place where your product/service might be able to thrive.

This will be enough for now. Within a day or so of research, you should be able to pull this information together, analyze it, and determine if this industry could be a good place for you with your product/service.

What are some of the companies that are already doing business in your market sector? These companies could be potential competitors—they might even offer a product or service that looks very much like yours.

A good way to start finding out what companies are already in the marketplace (potential competitors) is to just Google your product/service idea and see what comes up.

You can also go to online communities where your potential customers might be to discover what products/services they are currently using.

You can ask the community questions about popular products/services and the companies that produce them.

Joining these conversations will also help you in many more areas of your business.

Once you have identified your potential closest competitors, you should be able to find much of the information that you will need directly from their websites and social media.

To start with, you will want to know who they are, where they are, and why they would be motivated to buy your product/service or do business with you.

A good way to either confirm or discover who and where your potential customers are, is to Google your product/service and see what comes up.

For example, you could search for something like: “who buys... [your product/service]”

When you identify potential target customer segments, you can visit online communities (such as Facebook groups) where these potential customers hang out to learn more about who they are and what problem(s) they are experiencing with whatever product/service they are currently using.

Visit the websites of companies who are selling similar products/services to your target market (or who have a similar business to what you are proposing) to see what you can learn about their customers.

You may identify target market niches that you hadn’t thought of.

Take a look at your original idea sketch (or “prototype”) alongside your notes from the Secondary Research you have been doing so far.

Are there any changes that you need to make to your Value Proposition, Customer Segments, or Revenue Streams at this time?

If yes, go ahead and update it now (or create a new one), before moving on to Primary Research.

As you can see, investing time and effort into Secondary Research is essential to your preparation for launching a successful business. You are quickly becoming familiar with the playing field, the players, and the general rules of business within your industry.

If you discover that there already is a product/service/business in the marketplace that appears to be very similar to yours, don’t panic.

You will have the opportunity to learn more about this existing product/service directly from customers who are using it when you move into Primary Research (in the next module).

In this way, they can help you to design your product/service/business to actually solve the precise problem(s) that they are experiencing.

Or, on the other hand, if you learn that your potential customers are quite satisfied with the product/service/business that they are currently using, it will be good to find this out early on.

Your conversations with Potential Customers and Industry Insiders might, in fact, lead you to discover another problem that needs solving in this industry, which you may choose to pursue instead of your original idea.

Or, you may decide that it’s time to re-group and re-think your future.

If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, you will find another idea to pursue. And when that happens, you will know exactly how to start validating that it is, in fact, a high-potential opportunity worth building a business around.

Phase 1

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