The Startup Playbook, 2nd Edition

Chapter 23How Do I Build and Deliver a Great Product?

At Silerity, we had a bleeding-edge, high-priced automation product that was targeted at the biggest electronics companies in the world. I (Will) knew that big products with expensive price tags required loads of support, training, documentation, and of course, product completeness; and those factors drove our product development plan. We did well on most of this challenge, but we made several big mistakes delivering our complete offering.

After we developed a proof of concept of the technology—our prototype—we convinced Intel to work with us to refine the underlying technology and the overall product. This required a huge investment on our part. One of the founders was at Intel all the time. Taking advantage of their guidance, we rolled out our first MVP, then several subsequent iterations, making sure that they met Intel's needs. Of course, we considered what other potential customers needed along the way as well.

As the early product was deployed, we realized we had underestimated the support load. The complexity of the product led to dissatisfaction among the users. Our documentation was poor to nonexistent, and this cost the company dearly. To patch the hole, another founder had to be on-site at the customer's location to make sure things ran smoothly. Obviously, this situation didn't scale.

Eventually, we got it all straightened out. It took many more iterations of the MVP to improve the overall user experience and ...