114: Validating Software Product Ideas with Ronan Walsh

Digital technology is great for streamlining various back-office operations. With it being in abundance, validating ideas to offer software as a service (SaaS) is critical. Yet, Ronan Walsh warns, “Many SaaS companies set about creating an MVP [Minimum Viable Product] before ever speaking to a customer.” As the founder of a leading digital marketing company, he’s seen many people make this mistake. In this episode, he verbally maps out a process for researching, validating, and testing software product ideas before developing an MVP.

Special Guest: Ronan Walsh – Founder & CEO of Digital Trawler

Location: Limerick, Munster IRELAND

Air Date: September 13, 2020

Resources

The Mom Test – How to Talk to Customers & Learn if Your Business is a Good Idea when Everyone is Lying to You: a book by Rob Fitzpatrick.
Strategyzer: an app that allows you to rapidly sketch out business ideas with the Business Model & Value Proposition Canvas. Design, test, and share business models and value propositions with your team in real-time to determine if an idea is worth pursuing before making further investments.
Business Model & Value Proposition Canvas: a website where you can download these FREE templates. The “Business Model Canvas is a strategic management and entrepreneurial tool. it allows you to describe, design, challenge, invent, and pivot your business model.” The “Value Proposition Canvas helps you tackle the core challenges of every business – creating compelling products and services customers want to buy.”
Google Tools:
- Forms: an excellent resource for creating surveys and streamlining the process for collecting and reporting data from those surveys.
- Data Studio: Google’s free data visualization tool.
- Keyword Planner: Google’s tool to help you choose the words that will yield the greatest attention to your online content and ads.
- Ads: Google’s online advertising platform where “…advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. It can place ads both in the results of search engines like Google Search and on non-search websites, mobile apps, and videos.”
Yet Another Mail Merge: a software add-on for Google Gmail that streamlines the process for creating and distributing email campaigns.
Facebook Ads: an easy and effective way to reach your audience, build brand awareness, and grow sales with online advertising.

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Credits

Producer & Host: Alicia Butler Pierre
Editor: Olanrewaju Ade
Sponsor: rVidi

Bios

More About Guest, Ronan Walsh:
Ronan Walsh is the owner and founder of Digital Trawler – a SaaS Marketing Agency based in Ireland. Digital Trawler helps companies with their marketing strategy and messaging and have experts in SEO and paid social media advertisements. They also help SaaS companies identify their target customers, discover where those people are online, and develop strategies to get them to your site. If you’re a marketing manager or curious founder, Ronan and his team can do some of the heavy lifting by acting as mentors guiding you through product validation and SEO processes.

More About Host, Alicia Butler Pierre:
Alicia Butler Pierre is the Founder & CEO of Equilibria, Inc. – a 15-year-old operations management consulting firm. Her career in operations began over 20 years ago while working in various chemical plants and oil refineries. She invented the Kasennu™ framework for business infrastructure and authored, Behind the Façade: How to Structure Company Operations for Sustainable Success. It is the world’s first published book on business infrastructure for small businesses. Alicia hosts the weekly Business Infrastructure podcast with a global audience across 35+ countries.

More About Sponsor, rVidi:
rVidi is the easy app that lets you communicate via video soundbites in your own time in a public or private group setting. Learn more and download for free at rVidi.com. Currently available for iOS; Android development coming soon!

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