Tip #2: The “Beachhead Strategy”

• Definition: focusing your resources on one key area, usually a smaller market segment or product category, and winning that market first, even dominating that market, before moving into larger markets.
• In 4 words: Focus on your market.
• In 3 steps: Narrow your market. Win your market. Proceed.
• ex: Doorbot launched too quickly, received bad Amazon reviews, and the only way they survived was rebranding to Ring to outrun the bad reviews despite fixing the kinks of their first product.

Tip #3: Continuous Innovation

Chui, on the other hand, took another approach than Doorbot. They immersed themselves in an innovative, entrepreneurial ecosystem by going to an accelerator and started doing customer development in gyms, restaurants, hotels, and not to mention – the co-working space where they were participating in the accelerator. A customer that became one of their biggest sources of sales.A personal favorite continuous innovator of mine + rapid prototyping genius is Tom Chi, former lead designer of Google Glass, self-driving cars, and beyond. Check out his TED talk here and if you’re interested in more, he offers all of his brilliance in this online course.

Tip #4: Avoid Scope Creep

• Keep. It. Simple. Can you describe what you’re doing in one sentence?
• The gist? Ask your market. Prove it first – add more to it later.
• A success story is the example of Instagram. On the other side of the spectrum, Nitrous learned lessons from their failure.
• The case of Chui: Despite the advanced technical capabilities of Chui’s product, a survey of their users uncovered that the mass majority of their customers buy their products for simple reasons. This saved the company R&D costs and creating a more complicated product that their customers didn’t necessarily want.

Can you describe what you are doing in one simple sentence? Tweet This Quote

Tip #5: Don’t Become a Commodity: A Lesson from GoPro

• Marc Andreessen predicted GoPro would have future problems from the get-go (as opposed to other thought leaders like Chris Dixon and the mass majority of tech press).
• GoPro’s easily replicable features were the eventual cause of its demise from initial stock price per share being $90 from original launch to currently averaging at $5 per share.

Tip #6: Your Story Sells

There are a million people make the products you’re making — your story is what makes you stand out. Take time to communicate and put an emphasis on why you’re doing what you’re doing.Take Chui for example — one of their most compelling talking points was their founder story based in Morocco in a surfing village. This story helped Chui get massive media coverage on CNN. Personal side note from the author and favorite resource: If you haven’t seen Simon Sinek’s work, check out his TED talk here or his legendary book “Start With Why.

“Though the Internet of Things is in a holding pattern for innovative developments, there’s exponential possibility for the future + impact of this industry.” – Nezare Chafni, Chui

BURNING QUESTION // What’s the bottleneck holding back IoT’s potent force to define our future?