We base the UBI International Incubator Program on our successful method to identify the customer’s needs for your product.
Many start-up companies and projects fail when developing a new product or service. The biggest reason for failure (42%) is inadequate knowledge of market needs. A lot of time and money can be wasted on a proposal that isn’t adapted to your customer’s needs. In the worst-case scenario, knowledge of these needs is only discovered when the product is already on the market.
How we do it
The best way to understand market needs is, of course, to ask the people expected to pay and use a future product or service. Through our training program, you will learn how to formulate the right questions to obtain the most valuable information for your project. Each round of questions is different, but the methodology for developing them can be applied to any type of product or service.
You’ll conduct the interviews yourself with the support of coaches at UBI. In addition to gaining knowledge about how your product or service should be developed, you will also create important contacts for future sales.
Together with our experienced coaches, you’ll get help analyzing the results of your interviews. Are you on the right track or does the product or service need to be changed? Or maybe shelved altogether? You will also be shown how to produce a rough activity plan and estimate the costs needed to produce a product or service that your customers really want.
Why we do it
With better knowledge of your customer’s needs and the capital required to develop your product or service, it will be easier to obtain financing for product development, either internally within a large organization or via funding, equity or collaborations. Your argumentation and negotiating positions will be strengthened, and you’ll gain a better picture of your customer and end-user needs.
By mastering our interview methodology you’ll learn to develop questions for future ideas and projects that will enable you to quickly validate your ideas, change focus, and know when a project should be discontinued. An additional advantage of knowing how to plan and conduct interviews is that less money needs to be spent on external consultants and purchasing market reports.
