The number one mistake early stage founders make when launching a new product
August 22, 2021
In this episode, we talk about why early-stage founders should not look up to unicorn companies for their product launch strategies.
If you've been following me in the startup space then you know how much I preach against following unicorn founders and unicorn companies. So there are some things that yes, you can probably learn and take away. But for the most part, a lot of the strategies and techniques that these companies have used, they're antiquated because it might have worked 10, 20, 30 years ago, but the world is constantly evolving and with the way that it's evolving, we're seeing an era of rapid change.
So for us to be able to adapt to this change, I think it's more pertinent or more important to actually learn from other founders who are doing this every single day. And that's actually one of the reasons why I created a third podcast series. It's called founderpodcast.net. This is a tentative name, it might change, who knows? But this podcast shares the stories of resilient founders and what they're actually doing today. So what strategies are working right now? What's not working? What challenges are they facing? What successes are they having? You know, where are they struggling? This is an honest conversation with hyper-aware founders who are very comfortable with the growth stage of the company and they're willing to come and share where they're at to help other founders and essentially raise the floor for all of us involved.
So this is one of the key mistakes that founders make, right? They follow these unicorn founders and unicorn companies where these strategies and techniques just do not work anymore. I'll give you one example of how founders actually fail when they're doing a brand new product launch. So when founders are doing a brand new product launch, they will go look at what Apple is doing, let's say you're doing a physical product for example. So you might go look at the sales page for Apple's iPhone and a founder will think to themselves, you know? Well, there have been millions of dollars spent on research on how to create this perfect sales page that Apple is doing. So I'm just gonna copy whatever Apple is doing and I'm gonna use it for myself. And then a founder will create the marketing campaign in the exact same way that Apple designed it and then it won't go anywhere.
The campaign will flop and they'll wonder why. It worked for Apple. Why isn't it working for me? And the reason it's not working for you is that Apple is marketing towards a very different audience. Apple's... Apple has a brand name. Apple is already known. So they've already passed that hurdle, they don't have to educate the market on who they are. They don't have to build rapport anymore.
So when they're advertising an iPhone for example, they can actually advertise the product and that's where a lot of founders will fail, is they will advertise their product. If you're doing a brand new product launch, you cannot advertise a product because if people don't know who you are, they don't care about your product. They don't know anything about it. It's just stranger danger. That's the way it feels. The way to overcome this is instead of advertising the product, what you do is you advertise to the desire.
So they definitely have a desire. If you can pull on the string of this desire and then tie your product in into satisfying this desire. This is how you launch a brand new product, especially if you are an early-stage startup that doesn't have the brand authority as of yet. So I hope this helps. This is Robin Copernicus, boom bam, I'm out.
Continue your journey with me on my other channels:
So for us to be able to adapt to this change, I think it's more pertinent or more important to actually learn from other founders who are doing this every single day. And that's actually one of the reasons why I created a third podcast series. It's called founderpodcast.net. This is a tentative name, it might change, who knows? But this podcast shares the stories of resilient founders and what they're actually doing today. So what strategies are working right now? What's not working? What challenges are they facing? What successes are they having? You know, where are they struggling? This is an honest conversation with hyper-aware founders who are very comfortable with the growth stage of the company and they're willing to come and share where they're at to help other founders and essentially raise the floor for all of us involved.
So this is one of the key mistakes that founders make, right? They follow these unicorn founders and unicorn companies where these strategies and techniques just do not work anymore. I'll give you one example of how founders actually fail when they're doing a brand new product launch. So when founders are doing a brand new product launch, they will go look at what Apple is doing, let's say you're doing a physical product for example. So you might go look at the sales page for Apple's iPhone and a founder will think to themselves, you know? Well, there have been millions of dollars spent on research on how to create this perfect sales page that Apple is doing. So I'm just gonna copy whatever Apple is doing and I'm gonna use it for myself. And then a founder will create the marketing campaign in the exact same way that Apple designed it and then it won't go anywhere.
The campaign will flop and they'll wonder why. It worked for Apple. Why isn't it working for me? And the reason it's not working for you is that Apple is marketing towards a very different audience. Apple's... Apple has a brand name. Apple is already known. So they've already passed that hurdle, they don't have to educate the market on who they are. They don't have to build rapport anymore.
So when they're advertising an iPhone for example, they can actually advertise the product and that's where a lot of founders will fail, is they will advertise their product. If you're doing a brand new product launch, you cannot advertise a product because if people don't know who you are, they don't care about your product. They don't know anything about it. It's just stranger danger. That's the way it feels. The way to overcome this is instead of advertising the product, what you do is you advertise to the desire.
So they definitely have a desire. If you can pull on the string of this desire and then tie your product in into satisfying this desire. This is how you launch a brand new product, especially if you are an early-stage startup that doesn't have the brand authority as of yet. So I hope this helps. This is Robin Copernicus, boom bam, I'm out.
Continue your journey with me on my other channels:
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