Hot answers tagged products
21
Over the last decade or so, I've either had direct or indirect experience with:
A really fantastic web team from Lahore, Pakistan
A team from India that delivered such bad software, so late, the principal canceled the contract
A team from Beijing, China that was well-liked and respected by people at the principal
A team from a different part of China whose ...
14
You suffer from the inventor syndrome. You believe that the idea is 99% of the solution, and the execution is just stuff that others do.
Let's revisit one of your scenarios. Let's say you just tell an existing company about this great idea you have that would make their product so much better. My guess? They would laugh and not care to implement your idea. ...
9
Obviously, when a merchant offers "free shipping," that does not mean that FedEx is carrying the package for free. That just means that the cost of shipping, whatever it is, is already factored into the cost of the product. Or, to put it another way, the merchant takes it out of their profit margin. Or, to put it another way, the price of the product is ...
9
Go to the source:
http://www.gs1us.org/barcodes_and_ecom/i_need_a_u.p.c._barcode
$760 for 100 skus. Cost of doing business in large retail.
or checkout http://www.growmap.com/upc-codes/ and http://ezupc.com/
8
It's hard not to "love" something that you've dedicated so much time and money towards. And that love obviously helps motiviate to do everything that much better.
But watch out - that very same love can blind you, too. You may not see the flaws and critical omissions that would make the product a success. Others might not see the product fulfilling the same ...
7
Launch today.
If your product is usable, and the bugs that remain are for the most part minor, then launch now. If a specific functionality area of your application has many bugs, then maybe disable that area (if that's possible) while you fix most of the bugs.
And be wary of doing big press splash for your product now. You can always do a press launch ...
7
JIMG's advice is dead on correct.
All retail products sold in the US & Canada (with the exception of books) require UPC-A bar codes. You can not pick another symbology. (You can use an EAN bar code in most stores now- but that's just a UPC bar code with an extra digit, using the same bar code symbology as UPC.)
GS1 has a monopoly on the number ...
7
Change the name.
If the names are similar and you're in similar spaces, customers looking for you are likely to find them first. That's a problem.
Further, you'll be competing with them head to head in Google. If they have any sort of community, twitter/blog presence, etc, they should come up ahead of you for quite a while.
Also, you'll have to deal with ...
6
Everyone here will preface with "consult a lawyer," which you should, but generally speaking trademarks are limited to the scope of business.
For example a local business (restaurant, laundromat) could collide with a business in another state because they don't overlap.
Or if the two business are in completely different verticals (one agriculture, the ...
6
Steps to convert it to a startup:
Stop looking for funding and finish the program.
Once you have a finished product you can sell it.
Now that you are selling it you have a startup.
You might be surprised to find out that getting funding will probably take you more time and effort than just finishing your program.
5
The #1 error we all make the first time we price our product is too go too cheap. It's amazing how insecure we feel.
If you have direct competition, do not go for significantly cheaper. Dare to charge a comparable price and fight on quality and features (even if it's your version 1.0 or alpha).
Somehow, everytime, we keep making that same mistake. I don't ...
5
Depending on how far along your product is developed, basic landing pages with the purpose of gathering interest may prove to be a pretty fruitless, even unwise endeavor. Consumers are always motivated by what’s in it for them – so unless you have a pretty persuasive landing page (with good graphics and solid marketing/descriptions on what you offer), you’re ...
5
I would always favor cutting features rather than delivering anything half finished. Do one small thing very well and you can can always document upcoming features in your product roadmap and add them in over time.
Release early, release often, is an overused mantra, but still has lots of value in it.
One idea... have you considered a private beta program ...
5
I have experience in dealing with an off-shore development company - web designers in India.
The quality of the work was excellent, the price was ridiculously cheap in contrast to using local (US) developers, and they were very hungry for the work resulting in a quick turnaround and excellent maintenance. The firm was found after multiple references were ...
5
Atul
Here is a golden rule - meet with at least 10 potential customers and validate your idea with them. Make sure you have sufficient level of detail thought through in your concept and how you will present it to them.
Know that often the end-users are NOT the same as the payers (especially enterprise software). In this case first meet with the END-USERS, ...
5
Ideally, there should be no lines. If you can't even get 3 people (the co-founders) to discuss issues and find a consensus, you are doomed from the start. Your developer should be open-minded enough to listen to the recommendations of the MBA, and the MBA should be flexible enough to understand that the developer may have legitimate issues.
Don't pull rank. ...
5
How is the Open Source project licensed?
It it has a permissive license like AL 2.0 (apache license) or BSD or MIT its fine to sell the modifications along the project.
If it is GPL'ed or has a similar license it is possible to sell, but you need to give your source code to your customer (+ of course the source code of the other GPL components).
If you ...
4
If you sell the software and include a limited support term 1-3 months then you have an easier sell and your support risk expires rapidly. You can then generate more income by selling support contracts. You could price the software to include "free" setup and/or training if your industry is not competitive. If it is competitive then you risk the perception ...
4
What works for us is having a fairly reasonable annual support fee, but offer free training for our clients.
Clients love the free training, because it's free. We love it because we get valuable feedback on how our clients actually use our products, and get less support calls at inopportune times.
4
You should be aware that for many reasons, companies could just want not to be better. For example, making product A better might canibalize sales of the (more expensive) product B. Even if product B is from another vendor! (Because sales channels might want A as a cheaper but inferior alternative to B)
Making it better might be just too expensive. Or it ...
4
Let's look at it from the other side: You are a successful air conditioner manufacturer, and you've fought your way in this tough industry for decades. You have a successful line of products and you know why: because you have done a great deal of awsome work and you deserve success.
Now here comes some guy, telling you that if you add some fixtures to the ...
4
Checklist
1. Why?
It's important that you have a good understanding of what you want to build and why. Make sure that you only build if the AIR app is adding value. A lot of people make the mistakes of thinking that because the AIR framework allows you to use it off-line this is valuable to them. But given that you product is a website it might not be any ...
4
Question: What do people in your target market want?
Have you run a few polls, called a few prospects, emailed a few followers and get their opinion? While many of us may have an opinion, we may not be in your target market, therefore our advice could be 180% opposite of what you should do.
Given the above comment, I would be leaning towards (4). Seems ...
4
How do you turn a physical product into a web best seller? With video!
If you are able to create short videos that show your product being use in real-life scenarios, focusing on the features that make it unique, you'll be able to have people "experience" it without actually having to use it.
Done well, this can turn into a viral campaign.
A good example ...
4
It doesn't really matter whether they can go after you legally and succeed at stopping you in court. The question you have to ask yourself is, "Does my startup have the money to waste on legal fees defending an action that I know in advance will cause legal problems."
4
Look up eBay vs. PerfumeBay.com
Perfume bay had a protracted battle to keep their name, but ultimately lost. They sold perfume - in no way a direct eBay competitor. However, eBay argued, and won to a significant degree, that by virtue of PerfumeBay (a) using the internet to market its products, and (b) with the inclusion of "Bay" in their name, PerfumeBay ...
4
Enter into a formal agreement now. Ideally this should have been done at the beginning. Before you start collaborating. Even if you're friends, or very good acquaintances, make a formal agreement stating the terms of the collaboration. Who owns the IP, how much share each of the members have, conditions for buying out the other member, the terms of the ...
4
I have been involved with outsourcing in several projects. The results have varied from great to unmitigated disaster. Let me repeat my answer to a related question. The points are re-arranged and edited to better answer this question. I have repeatably been able to get great results from outsourcing. However, there is an art to it, so expect to burn some ...
4
Firstly you need to make sure you operate a business with integrity or you will have real trouble getting a growing list of customers. It sounds concerning that you have been accepting projects for work that you cannot do. If you only know ASP, don't take on JSP projects, I assume your clients didn't know that you weren't experienced in JSP.
As for getting ...
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