This is serious. It sounds like a fantasy but it is real. When you have a business idea in mind, you may find it challenging to develop... at times you think it is impossible. You have many questions that need to be answered as soon as possible.
- If you want to offer a product, will people buy it?
- If you want to offer a SAAS (software as a service), will people subscribe to it?
- If you want to offer an experience, will people buy it?
I am going to tell you the story of when we simulated a fictitious product to validate a business idea.
Tappla 2015
One morning in 2015, to the Munich office that we shared with my friend Brian, came an invitation to participate in the beta development test for Apple TV devices.
Apple TV opened up the possibility of programming your own apps for that platform, just as it did for the iPhone with the App Store years ago. Instantly it occurred to us to offer a service to have your own app inside Apple TV by simply connecting to your YouTube or Vimeo account, automatically importing the videos and creating the APP.
Fantastic!... how did we do it? We did not
We created a landing page that offered the detailed service and invited you to subscribe in two clicks. Those interested left their basic data on the first screen (name, email, link to YouTube channel) and could not advance in the sign up... we said "Thank you, we will let you know when the service is available".
What a waste of time, huh? No...
This helped us to validate the interest in our idea and there were people who subscribed! In addition, as we carried out payment campaigns on Google and Facebook, the experience also helped us to understand our conversion prices.
We were able to predict when we would get a new customer and design a coherent business plan at these acquisition prices (CAC). This data is very important to understand if the numbers fit in your business model.
Today Tappla is a company with dozens of clients and a stable turnover. But it all started with a Fake.