Even Amazon Uses The F**k Up Then Fix Method

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Damn, I love Amazon Prime!

This year, I’ve bought every single Christmas present through Amazon Prime. Free next day delivery is worth every cent of the yearly cost.

Heck, in London you can now get delivery within the hour.

That’s mental!

I don’t even want to think about the logistics to make that work.

Although, to be fair, when it launched… it actually didn’t work.

Which is exactly why wanted to chat about it, because it proves exactly what I’ve been saying for years.

Trying to build the perfect product before you launch it just doesn’t work.

That’s old-school.

All it’s gonna do is cost you a shite load of money. Chances are, the only person it’s going to be perfect for will be you.

So… you need to move away from the old-school and come join me in the new-school.

This is where we use a way of building products called Agile Development. But, forgetting the official terms, basically, we’re building quick and fixing later.

And if you don’t believe me, then this is what they did with Amazon Now (the one-hour delivery service in London)…

  1. Come up with a concept
  2. Build the MVP (minimum viable product), e.g. do the minimum needed to launch the product to see if anybody wants it
  3. Listen to your customers, discover what they want and find the flaws
  4. Fix them
  5. Repeat steps 3 and 4

When Amazon launched their Amazon Now service in London, it was at the end of a summer. What happened?

It was an absolute friggin disaster.

Everybody I know who used it, didn’t get their stuff within the hour, some of them didn’t even get it the same day!

But that, in my opinion, was always part of Amazon’s plan.

Because however much preparation they did, it was always going to have disasters when it launched. I mean, when you’re trying to deliver products within an hour, disasters are pretty much guaranteed.

What they really wanted to do, was to see how much demand there was for the delivery, and find out what the real issues were, not the ones imagined by a development team.

And… they wanted to do that before Christmas.

After all, Christmas was where they were going to make the real money. All the last-minute presents, all the last minute booze. By releasing their new service at the end of the summer, it gave them time to have everything ironed out by Christmas.

Clever!

So, the lesson is… build the minimum viable concept of your product, then listen to what your customers want you to do and react quickly, while they’re already paying you to use it.

Michael

P.S. This is going to be my last email until 2017, so have a great Christmas and New Year.

P.P.S. That also means, this could be your last chance to get access to Business Ignition for the January 2017 edition

https://michaelwilding.com/business-ignition/

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