How I Built This

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

This is a wonderful book on coming up with a business idea, how to position your product or service in the market and how to generate buzz to attract attention for that product or service and eventually make a sale.   “How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs” by Guy Raz, is a bestseller that offers no nonsense practical advice on making a business idea prosper.  He compares starting a business to assembling an airplane. Here are his three great business ideas from the book.

Building the Vessel (Your Product)

A profitable product exists at the intersection of problems people have and problems you are passionate about solving (the passion for solving a problem typically results from having the problem yourself).

A perfect example is Jen Rubio, founder of the luggage company Away. One day while flying through Zurich, Rubio’s suitcase broke and she had to sprint to her next flight while leaving a trail of underwear behind her. At that moment, she vowed to buy the perfect bag and never suffer this embarrassment again. But when she got home and started researching travel bags, she could not find a reliable, affordable, great‐looking travel bag. She called her friends, and they could not suggest any good options. The only options seemed to be big box store luggage that looked like everyone else’s luggage or super high‐end luggage that cost more than a plane ticket. This was an opportunity ‐ a real problem she was passionate about solving.

Rubio and her friend decided they would build a better suitcase, despite not having any experience in the luggage industry. For the next few weeks, they went to every department store and luggage store in New York to compare the luggage on the market. Then they called dozens of factories to understand how they could manufacture luggage. Thanks to their insatiable curiosity, Rubio and her business partner went from knowing nothing about luggage to becoming luggage experts.

When it came time to design their product, they asked nearly 800 people open‐ended questions like, “How do you pack?” and “What’s your biggest pain point when you’re traveling?” In the book, Jen says, “With some people we knew well, we would actually go over to their house and watch them pack… and that’s how we figured out how to make our perfect suitcase.”

Find a problem you are passionate about solving. Research, build, test, and iterate your product until your target customer believes it solves their problem better than any solution on the market.

Assemble the Wings (Strategy)

The wings that allow your product to take flight are the strategy components: story and positioning. When you have a good story, people are eager to recommend your product to their friends. And when you position your product to dominate a niche market, you gain momentum so that it becomes hard for competition to catch you or kill you.

A perfect example is RxBar. The founders of RxBar were sick of eating sugary protein bars with mystery ingredients so they created a protein bar in their kitchen with basic, wholesome ingredients (or as they say “No BS”) – just 3 egg whites, 2 dates, and 6 almonds. Their

story resonated with their target market ‐ paleo and CrossFit athletes who valued transparency and were very mindful of what they put in their bodies.

RxBar started to grow without the fear of big protein bar manufacturers coming to crush them because they positioned their product in a non‐threatening way ‐ they sold directly to customers online and at obscure locations like CrossFit gyms. Big competitors didn’t take them seriously until RxBar dominated the CrossFit and paleo market and burst into the mainstream. But by that time RxBar had enough market share and momentum to withstand any attack from the big protein bar manufacturers.

Turn on the Jets (Generating a buzz for your product)

The burst of energy you need from the jets before takeoff is like the buzz you need to generate before a product launch. Think of a product launch like a movie release. You want to garner enough attention and hype so you get a rush of customers opening week, and at the same time allow your product to grow by word of mouth (people who experience your product share tell their friends about it).

Before Instagram founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, launched Instagram in the Apple Store, they invited 100 designers and journalists to try Instagram out. The journalists had platforms that reached thousands of people, and the designers were active on forums like Dribble. If the journalists and designers liked Instagram, they could be the authority to help get Instagram off the ground. Systrom and Krieger leveraged their network to connect with journalists and designers. Many ignore them, but some agreed to try their app. Many who tried the app, loved it, and were eager to be the first to write about it.

As you work your way up to launching your product, reach out to people who have a good number of followers and can influence your target market. These might be bloggers on Medium, YouTubers, or people on Instagram. If you can get enough early adopters to become evangelists for your product, you are well on your way to having a successful product.