I recently visited a bakery where I saw the RECUP recycling system. A similar idea was abandoned during a Lean Startup Machine event due to insufficient market demand.
Fail Fast and Cheap or Fail Too Fast?
Two months after RECUP launched in Rosenheim, the "Coffee-to-go" team started at Lean Startup Machine 2016 in Munich to develop their business idea in 3 days and test it with customers. The team aimed to find a solution against the mountains of disposable coffee cups.
After interviewing customers, only 3 out of 16 consumers really cared about what happened to their coffee cups. The team then changed the customer segment to check whether café owners wanted a waste-reducing alternative to plastic cups.
Timing and Persistence in Finding Product-Market Fit
In retrospect, we can learn from this example that it may be necessary to pursue your product vision longer and not immediately change the customer segment or product offering. Perhaps the mass market wasn't ready for the solution in 2016, and only with stronger media coverage about plastic in oceans and food did customers become more sensitized to the problem.
Waiting as Market Entry Strategy
Kevin Rose had an interesting solution approach to this problem. In the Product Love Podcast, Kevin spoke with Jake Knapp and Jonathan Courtney about his failed projects. In many cases, he was simply too early for the market. His conclusion from this experience is not to scrap and abandon the product, but to put it into a kind of hibernation.
The product is not further developed but only maintained with minimal effort. The product remains in this sleeping beauty state until more demand has developed in the market to put more focus and resources back into marketing and further development of the product.