Going from idea to execution.

Building a Proof of Concept

© Ryan Robinson

Module 4: Validating Your Business

Lesson 2: Building a Proof of Concept

Creating the foundation for what’s to come.

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Defining your proof of concept.

What exactly is a proof of concept?

A proof of concept is a realization of your method or idea that demonstrates its feasibility.

The purpose of building a proof of concept is to verify that your concept has the potential of being used. It’s not a guarantee of the future success of your business, but rather your PoC is designed to be an affirmation that what you’re creating could turn into your eventual business. It’s the foundation for what’s to come.

A proof of concept is usually relatively small in scope and it’s by definition not a finished solution. It’s intention is to solve the most basic form of the problem your business is hoping to address.

It’s incredibly important to acknowledge that your PoC should not be perfect. While you should be proud of the work you’ll be putting in to build it, you shouldn’t be investing months and months of your time into your PoC. The goal is to launch it before it feels ready. Because *news flash* you’ll never truly feel ready. There are always improvements, additions, tweaks and optimizations that could be made to make your solution better. But that pursuit of perfection will lead you down the path of never launching anything. You don’t launch your 1 year vision on day 1.

Thus, our goal in this lesson is to develop your plan for building a PoC that can get you started and landing your first group of customers. Then, the feedback you get will inform you on where to go & what to work on next before scaling and seeking out a larger number of customers.

A good proof of concept is designed to achieve 3 major goals: 1. Verify that your solution does indeed solve the problem you’re attempting to address. (Does it solve the problem you’re seeking to eliminate?)

2. Confirm that your solution is valued by your future customers. (Is the solution valuable to your customers?)

3. Determine whether or not people will pay for your solution. (Will your target customers pay for it? How much are they willing to pay for it?)

These questions are exactly what we’re going to answer through this lesson and the next (Driving Traffic).

Let’s get started.

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1. Setting your proof of concept goal.

Whether you know what you want your PoC to be right now or not, it’s important that we first start with the goal you want it to achieve. From there, we’ll work backwards to find the best proof of concept medium to achieve the very specific goal you’re going after.

Here are a few examples of the many different forms a PoC goal can come in:

• 1 paying customer (or 10, even 100) • 100 waiting list subscribers • 1 pre-sale of your upcoming product or service • 50 email subscribers • $100 in affiliate commissions generated • 100 listeners on your first Podcast episode • Getting a book proposal accepted by a publisher • Fully funding a Kickstarter campaign

Your PoC goal will be unique to your business and the important thing is that it gives you relative confidence in the future of the solution you’re building. There’s no definitive, across the board success metric for all PoC’s. This comes down to achieving what you need, in order to prove (i.e. your judgement) your business can work.

Achieving this goal is not going to guarantee success, but this is where you need to start small. This is the goal you want to accomplish with your PoC, so that it answers the 3 key questions on the first page of this activity. Now, we’re going to set your PoC goal by answering a few key questions.

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1. Is your business going to be built around a digital product (websites and blogs count here), service offering (freelancing and consulting) or a physical product (products, storefronts and retail)?

2. Which do you feel would give you enough confidence that you’re accomplishing your 3 key PoC goals?

Digital/Online Service Physical

3. How many sales, pre-sales, waiting list subscribers (or other success metric you’ve chosen) do you feel you’ll need in order to validate your PoC? Briefly explain why.

Sales/clients Pre-sales Waiting list subscribers

Other (describe):

If you’re having trouble setting this goal, head over to the Facebook Group and ask for advice. Don’t get hung up on this step. You can always shift and adjust your goal based on feedback & learning as you go.

2. Outlining your proof of concept.

Let’s start with clearly and succinctly stating your PoC goal. We’ll add a timeline for accomplishing this soon.

My PoC goal is:

Now that we know exactly what your PoC needs to achieve, we’re going to engineer a plan of action to create the vehicle that’ll get you there.

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1. Based on the examples above, do you have an idea of what your PoC should be? Explain why (and exactly how you believe it’ll achieve your PoC goal. Don’t worry about driving traffic, we’ll cover that in the next lesson).

Here are a few examples of the many different forms a PoC can come in:

• Blog post • Explainer video • Portfolio of your existing work • Hand-built prototype • Simple product sales page or website • Rough demonstration of your software solution • Facebook Ad • Email or email newsletter • Sign up form • Podcast • Self-published book • Facebook or Slack group • Kickstarter campaign

Like your goal, your PoC will also be unique to your business and your specific skills (because you’ll at least be leading the charge on building the PoC). Your PoC is what you’re going to create, in order to accomplish your PoC goal, so that you answer the 3 key questions on the first page of this activity.

We’re going to start determining the type of PoC that’s right for you by answering a few questions.

For detailed breakdowns of real PoCs I’ve used, jump to page 6.

2. Outlining your proof of concept (continued).

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5. What is the absolute minimum deliverable it’d take to hit your PoC sales or pre-sales goal?

If you’re still unsure of what your PoC should be, let’s keep going. If you’re set, move on to the next page.

3. Is your product or service something that can be pre-sold? If so, move on to question 5. If it can’t be pre-sold, what is the absolute minimum deliverable it’d take to hit your waiting list goal (or other success metric you’ve chosen) for once you launch?

2. How can that deliverable (from question #1 on the previous page) be simplified even further while still achieving your desired success metric?

For example, if you want to build an online course—how much easier would it be to validate that concept (and your curriculum) by signing just 1 paid coaching client first? How about getting 100 people to join your waiting list for once the course is ready? If you want to open a coffee shop, how about first doing low cost street fairs or swap meets for a few weeks or months to sell your first couple hundred cups of coffee, build a brand and following? If you want to start freelancing, you don’t need a fancy website to land just 1 client and validate that there’s a demand for your expertise. Work your relationships and reach out to friends, old co-workers, former classmates and acquaintances to see if they know anyone who could use your services. Grow from there.

If you’re having trouble deciding what your PoC should be, head over to the Facebook Group & ask for advice.

4. How can that deliverable be simplified even further while still achieving your desired goal?

6. How can that deliverable be simplified even further while still achieving your desired goal?

3. Developing your action plan.

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Describe exactly what your PoC is going to be and how it’s going to achieve your PoC goal:

Now, let’s talk about what it’s going to take to actually build your PoC.

Is this PoC something that you can create yourself?

Ideally it is at least partially, since you’ve hopefully chosen to pursue an opportunity that engages your strongest skills.

If you can’t build your PoC solely on your own, that’s OK.

In order to compensate, are you going to seek out the necessary help from friends, family, partners, contractors or otherwise in order to build this PoC?

Is it worth pausing here to acquire the right skills you’ll need in order to build your PoC yourself?

In the end, only you can answer these questions based on your own unique situation. However, you need to train yourself to become a master problem-solver within your business. You can do this.

There’s nothing that can’t be achieved if you’re willing to be creative, change the rules & assumptions and commit yourself to making your business happen—despite any shortcomings you feel right now. Remember, Steve Jobs never wrote a line of code as he helped build Apple into one of the world’s most profitable companies. He had a technical partner with strong complementary skills. In your own way, you can do this too.

If you can’t currently build your PoC yourself, describe how you’re going to get it built right here:

3. Developing your action plan (continued).

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Assuming you have the skills you need and expertise to determine how you can best build your PoC quickly, outline step-by-step exactly what you’re going to do in order to bring it to life. Take some time to research, look for case studies and examples if need be. Keep in mind that your PoC should not be perfect or feel like a finished good. We’re going for the minimum that can achieve our 3 key goals from the first page of this activity.

Here’s my step-by-step plan for building my PoC:

As with any milestone, having a firm deadline for when it needs to be accomplished helps keep you on track. It builds accountability (especially when you share it with others—like me or in the community) and keeps you focused on what’s truly the most important utilization of your time at each stage of your business.

If your PoC will take more than 2-4 weeks to build in the time outside of your day job, chances are it’s not simple enough, you’re not allocating enough time or you’re operating far outside your area of expertise.

Realistically, while still pushing yourself, what should a firm deadline be for building your PoC?

I’ll be launching my PoC on (specific date):

Set a calendar reminder for halfway to your launch date to check in.

Remember, if you’re having any trouble deciding what your PoC should be or how you’re going to build it, head over to the Facebook Group & ask for advice. For all you know, there could be someone with the complementary skill set you need, just waiting for the right opportunity to get involved in a project like yours.

If you have questions or want feedback, come to us in the Facebook Group with your challenges and we’ll help you solve them.

4a. Proof of concept breakdown (Digital Product & Blog).

Here’s how I validated the idea of creating this course, The Launch Formula, and building a business with (eventually) multiple sources of revenue from my blog. It all started with a simple blog post.

In 2014, I began working in the online education industry. I got to see first-hand how some of the smartest entrepreneurs were creating successful online courses that helped people drive meaningful change. I was inspired by this, and wanted to package together the personal systems I’ve developed, lessons learned and advice I’d previously been giving out to friends for years, into an easy-to-access online course experience—to reach a broader audience of people who wanted to start a business while keeping their day jobs.

Proof of Concept Goal: Generate 100 subscribers to a waiting list for TLF.

Proof of Concept Outline: In order to achieve my goal of generating 100 signups on a waiting list for once I actually started building this course, I decided to lean on two of my strongest skills: writing and content marketing. It’s what I did at the job I had at the time, so I pushed myself to write a post that was more in-depth than I had ever written before. After 1 week of writing 3hrs/day in the mornings before heading to work and getting in ~10hrs over the weekend, I had the post. Was it perfect? No. But it was good enough to validate my idea.

After publishing my PoC blog post that outlined all of the key topic areas my course would cover, within the post I offered readers the opportunity to sign up for the course waiting list, to be notified when it launched. At this time, my website was brand new—I had no audience. It was time to prove to myself that there would indeed be a demand for a course on this topic. I hypothesized that if 100 people showed interest, I could cover 5-10 of them into customers. So, once the post went live, I spent about $50 on Facebook Ads to drive in some initial traffic, posted it to online forums and it racked up more than 100 people on the waiting list in 1-2 months. In the next lesson, we’re talking about several more key traffic driving strategies that have worked for my various different businesses.

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If your business revolves around either building a digital product (online course, eBook, software tool, blog, templates, artwork, etc.) or creating a website that serves a very specific need in the marketplace, you’ll need to put together a rough version of what your offering is going to be, in order to truly test the validity of it.

There are a lot of free resources that’ll teach you how to set up a WordPress blog and I can help too. Start a discussion in the Facebook Group if you want help or feedback.

4b. Proof of concept breakdown (Service: Freelance Business).

In it’s most simple form, offering your contract-based services as a consultant or freelancer means that you’re using your skills and industry experience to help others accomplish very specific goals.

What do people care about most when they consider hiring contract help to achieve business goals? Results. Therefore, your goal as an independent service provider is to give your potential clients as much certainty as possible that you can deliver what they want and need. That certainty can come in many different forms.

At the time I set out to validate the concept of eventually being a full-time freelance content marketer in 2015, I already had an established website with some traffic and a small reputation for myself as a content marketer that I’d worked very hard to build over the course of a couple years at CreativeLive. So, I used those assets to my advantage. I began mentioning and linking out to mid-sized startups and brands that talked about freelancing, productivity and entrepreneurship-related topics (what I’m best at writing about). After publishing, I’d reach out and let them know about the feature. My first post and reach out combination was a success.

Proof of Concept Goal: Sign 1 freelance content marketing client.

Proof of Concept Outline: My hypothesis going into signing my first freelance content marketing client was that if I could create the exact type of content I knew my target clients would want for their websites—and publish that on my blog with some mentions of these target clients mixed in—I’d be able to reach out and pitch working relationships based on first providing value in the form of that mention on my site.

My first attempt at this strategy led to my very first paid freelance client, Selz.com. I wrote a post called, “The Just Say No Time Management System” based on how I manage my time throughout the week. Within the post, I weaved in mentions to other content that lived on the sites of potential clients—where authors talked about how other entrepreneurs and startups were managing their time. Selz.com had one of the blog posts I linked out to. Within a couple hours of publishing that post, Kristen from their marketing team commented on my post.

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The next day, I sent Kristen a follow up email suggesting that I guest post (for free) on their blog to see if their audience is interested in my content. As a content marketer, I knew that most marketers and blog managers are always hungry for good new content—especially when it’s free. For the second time, I again provided free value to Selz.com.

My guest post did extremely well. All in all, less than three weeks after I originally linked to Selz.com and reached out to Kristen, I signed them as my first paid client on a $1,000/mo retainer to write 2 posts for their blog each month. Not bad considering this was my first client and my hourly rate was around $150/hr.

4c. Proof of concept breakdown (Physical Product: The iStash).

When it comes to validating a physical product-based business, remember what your goal is. Do you want to pre-sell 100 units of your product before you start building a full production run of them? Create a waiting list of 250 people who are interested in buying after you launch? Either way, your goal is to get customers lined up before investing significant financial resources.

With a physical product-based business, you’re more often than not going to need at least a very rudimentary, physical representation of your product as a PoC. Depending upon your solution and target audience, the argument could be made that you can get by with generating waiting list subscribers by going out and creating an explainer video to serve as your PoC—rather than build a prototype yourself.

With the iStash, I chose to hand-build 10 prototypes and sell them to friends & acquaintances.

Proof of Concept Goal: Sell 10 hand-built iStashes. (Note that my goal today would be different: I’d aim for selling 100 of these prototypes first before investing in manufacturing. I’d actively solicit more feedback and I’d make some crucial design changes—my first 10 customers were all too close to me to give “objective” feedback and 10 opinions didn’t give me enough diversity of opinions.)

Proof of Concept Outline: Another essential reason why I decided to hand-build prototypes was to more easily illustrate the concept and functionality I was going after—to the Chinese factories I had started chatting with about mass producing the product.

I spent $50 and bought 10 dummy iPhone toys on eBay, cracked them open and rigged up a DIY hinge system with some parts from Home Depot. Now the cover could open & close (similar enough to how my product mockups would function), and I had my PoC. Factoring in everything associated with building 10 of these PoCs, it cost me no more than $150 in components and tools.

Next, I sold them to friends to start validating that at least some people would pay for the product. I used a few of them to go around to local smoke shops and get feedback from purchasing managers at the retail locations. They’d likely be my first larger scale distribution partners once I had a production run of 1,000 units sitting in my garage.

I’d later make a few more handmade samples to send to the manufacturing facility I chose in China, to give them a very clear example of what I wanted built.

Building these rough prototypes were absolutely necessary to convey the concept of what the iStash was built to do.

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5. Creating an online waiting list (bonus).

If your PoC requires having a waiting list ready before you launch, I highly recommend creating one with a simple Google Form. It’s quick, easy and allows you to track the names, emails and any other information you ask of your waiting list subscribers. Simple and free is the name of the game.

We’re going to use a combination of Google Forms and Google Sheets to collect the names and email addresses of the people who view your PoC and are interested in learning more once you launch.

Once you’re signed into Google (Gmail), navigate over to your Google Drive. Once in Drive, click on “New” and scroll down to “More” where you’ll find the option to create a new Google Form (left, below).

Next, you’ll be taken to a brand new Google Form template (right, below) where you’ll be able to edit the title, and add 2 simple form fields for collecting both the first name and email address.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to click on the gear icon in the top right (Settings) and set the form to be viewable by “Anyone”.

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5. Creating an online waiting list (bonus).

Once your Google Form waiting list is built and ready to go, you’ll see a tab appear at the top that says “Responses.” This is where you’ll toggle over to view the names and email addresses for the people who’ve signed up for you waiting list. It’ll look like this:

Once people begin signing up for your waiting list, you’ll want to start viewing them in “Sheets” which automatically creates a Google Spreadsheet of all the respondents on your waiting list.

This format will be much easier to work with once you have a sizable number of people on your list and it comes time to send email updates to everyone. Once you create the Google Spreadsheet, it’ll look like this:

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LET’S DO THIS

You have the extremely specific goal your PoC needs to achieve.

You have a detailed description of exactly what your PoC is going to be.

You have an action plan for how you’re going to build it (or problem-solve your way into getting it built).

You know the exact date you’re going to launch your PoC. What is it again?

I’m pumped for you. Now is when this really gets exciting.

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Again, know that you’re not alone in this. If you still have doubts, questions or insecurities around what your PoC goal should be, what the actual PoC itself should be or how you’re going to build it—that’s OK.

I want you to turn to our community. Head over to the Facebook Group or send me an email at ryan@ryrob.com if you’re feeling stuck on anything.

Keep in mind that your PoC doesn’t need to (and shouldn’t) be perfect. It’s ok if it’s raw. While you want to be proud of what you build, you don’t want to waste valuable weeks trying to optimize for things that you really don’t know will have a positive impact with your customers.

Let’s get your PoC built and launched. It’s time to get to work.

In the next lesson, we’re talking all about how to drive highly targeted traffic—your potential customers—into your PoC so that you’ll accomplish your PoC goal.