When you start your own product business , you have an idea and endless motivation, and the feeling that your product will help people. If you accept the mission, to achieve this goal with little or no budget, you need to turn that idea into a real business . First tip: Don’t forget your customers, test your product !

During the first phase of creation, the rule of « friendship » and networking will be something important. You will see that it is a permanent quest for help , advice and demonstration; it is exciting. You will be motivated after a great meeting, but you will also feel fear and perhaps apprehension. I think this is part of the process ; that is why it is important to talk (and listen!) to people.

We always see people succeeding on social media , but we don’t see the journey they took to get to their first real customer , a customer you’ve never heard of before. It’s not an easy journey, and I will say that the biggest enemy you have is yourself . Starting a business is a constant battle against yourself. Just look at the number of people around you who want to become an « entrepreneur » but never take the first step because of fear or (add excuse).

Here I want to share a little story about a fight against myself.

As I said a few moments ago, I have always been looking for users for pre-alpha testing with « constructive » feedback to improve my product. It worked at an early stage, but quickly became insufficient . I had to think outside the box, and when the box is something you created, thought about and built yourself, it is hard to think outside the box.

I worked in the test space and it was fun to test my product . It is very satisfying to see your idea turn into a product and come to life. Each sprint , new things were implemented and I was eager to participate in the next one.

Every customer encounter brings new features and, with it, the feeling of helping your future customers. Seeing people get excited about your product and ask to see the next big feature is hard to explain, but it feels good . It’s a good feeling, but it can also blind you.

As you can imagine, testing my own product with my developer worked like a charm because it was based on my own specifications and code . Yes, we found a few issues, and in a short time, we started finding fewer and fewer . Something inside me started saying: « … Your product is good. You can now open beta! « 

Through my experience I knew that it was just an illusion …

Knowing this and implementing it is something that, in the end, was hard . I speak here as a « founder » because as a « founder », the next big feature was more important than the one we had already implemented . I’m sure some of you know this feeling :). You get so excited that you forget about quality . I think it’s easy to have this feeling.

Your product is like your child: you want to see it grow, but you also want to give it the best possible education to prepare it for life.

I decided to add a little less features and hire a tester for two weeks to check the work already done. It was a big expense for me , and I was afraid I wouldn’t find anything.

I don’t like to talk about the « number » of issues found because it’s not a good indicator, but here, about 100 issues were found, from the most insignificant to the highest priority . In addition, about 13 improvement suggestions were made. We then spent a full week working on this project and did a second round of testing. We found a few regressions and 10 new issues, but ultimately the confidence in my product grew with each release .

I think testing is mainly done for the customer.

Quality is something that is hard to achieve but easy to lose . And when you start, losing a customer for a « simple » lack of quality goes straight to your heart .

Recently, a large company tested my product and was satisfied with its quality. We are now planning to deploy the solution! The CIO told me that he is not afraid of innovation undertaken by a small company and that he is not afraid to try. Unfortunately, many tools were ultimately not deployed due to quality issues.

More questions = more time = more money

In conclusion, I advise you to never forget to test your product . Don’t just test it yourself, but if possible ask a professional to do it. Most of you work with freelancers for development. Try the tests before the first « official » version.

The feedback you receive will result in better products.

And you, what was your fight? I will be happy to read your comments on this subject!

Thank you for reading!

Follow me on LinkedIn 🙂