No one really knows when to greenlight mass production
Instinct, gut feeling, and boldness. That’s what I’d like to say, but let me put down a somewhat more logical account as well.
There is generally no technical criterion for how far you need to go before you’re allowed to manufacture, so this inevitably becomes a judgment made at the management layer. Most startups probably think that if they run mass production once and it fails, their funding will run out right there. So this is truly a “life or death” decision of extreme weight.
People develop unfavorable ways of thinking when making this weighty decision. Let me show a few typical examples.
“Because it’s already fixed in the original schedule”
This is the height of folly. You could even say no judgment has been made at all. A schedule should include milestones that serve as checkpoints for “making a judgment.”
“Because it’s working fine for now”
This kind of thinking tends to occur at the level of development team members. But as I mentioned earlier, this decision belongs at the management layer. So the fact that things are working fine is nothing more than proof that development is proceeding on schedule, and it is insufficient as a reason either to move the schedule forward or to stop it.
“If we don’t move to mass production here, we’ll run out of funding”
It’s not uncommon to feel that you’ve already invested a certain amount of budget into development, that there’s a budget being kept in reserve for mass production, and that this is the last possible timing. Honestly, it’s hard to blame the person who decides to push forward in this situation. I imagine that in cases where development keeps going with “just one more step, one more step” and the company ends up going bankrupt without ever releasing the product, the frustration felt by the members, including the developers, must be enormous. But if I may say so, rather than gambling everything based on the funding situation, you should instead gamble on flipping the funding situation around. Concretely, that means refining what differentiates you from other companies, expanding the target market, or newly acquiring potential partners. It is always possible to increase a company’s appeal. And in most cases, that costs less money than running mass production. That said, this kind of decision can sometimes look like a betrayal of existing shareholders’ expectations, so it’s important to maintain proper internal governance around it.
Now, on the other hand, here is what the decision to move forward into mass production should look like.
The moment you think “this needs to be put to the market” is the moment you should commit.
“Moving forward because you’re certain of victory” is sophistry. If you could win every single time simply by believing you would win, how dry and lifeless business would be. Sometimes putting something into the market earns acclaim, and sometimes the result is completely unexpected. Sometimes the stone you cast sends ripples back from a completely different angle than you imagined. For example, when Yamaha released a product called the “light-up guitar,” it had a feature allowing chord playing with one hand. The original concept behind this was actually the rather goofy idea of “being able to play even while drinking beer with one hand.” But once it actually shipped as a product, it apparently received inquiries and high praise from people with one arm.
Also, when I was developing a urination-care product called “DFree,” it was originally designed with elderly people as the main target. But once we actually released it, I came to think that the people who could get the highest utility from it might in fact be households with relatively younger people with disabilities. Putting something to the market requires a certain necessary level of quality. Conversely, nothing beyond that is required. I think it’s very difficult to grasp, through direct experience, where that minimal essential level lies, without falling into the trap of chasing excessive quality.
However, there is a very simple solution to this. Become a user yourself.
Use it as a user, and ask honestly whether it feels good or bad. There will be small glitches and inconveniences. Are those within a range a user could tolerate or not? The texture, the feel, the experience that exist here — have you reached the stage where you want to share them with many people?
Once the passion that arises here is actually born, it becomes hard to stop, and it will quickly light a fire under you, telling you “there’s no choice but to release this.”
The content of this post is an excerpt (original text) from the following book. If you’re interested, please get a copy.
The Shape of a Happy IoT Startup
The Shape of a Happy IoT Startup
Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2022/08/1134/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.