About Favoriot – Part V: Find Product-Market Fit to Survive

Finding the Right Fit: The Early Challenges and Breakthroughs of Favoriot

I still remember how difficult it was to secure our first ten customers, even though the Favoriot Platform was offered for free initially.

Despite the offer, it wasn’t easy to attract interest. At that time, I was genuinely worried. I kept wondering, would this product succeed? Or would it just become another obsolete product forgotten shortly after its launch?

“Is all this effort going to be in vain?” That was the question that often crossed my mind. What if the product we had developed with such dedication wasn’t accepted by the market? What if all the hard work my team put in, tirelessly day and night, to make Favoriot a success, didn’t bear fruit?

I knew I couldn’t let them down. My team had given their best, and as their leader, I couldn’t allow their efforts to go to waste.

But as time went on, I felt more and more pressure to ensure that Favoriot found its rightful place in the market.

I often sat and pondered, sometimes late into the night, trying to figure out how to gain the necessary market traction. Market traction isn’t something easily achieved, especially when you’re a new player in a competitive industry like IoT.

At first, we started by offering Favoriot to individuals. We targeted university students and freelancers who might be interested in using the platform for their projects.

But even with this strategy, the results were not what we had hoped for. I began to think that maybe our approach wasn’t quite right.

I then considered, “Perhaps we should offer this platform to university lecturers.” They had students involved in IoT projects, so maybe they would see the value in Favoriot.

But unfortunately, this effort also didn’t yield satisfying results. I began to feel anxious. “What else can we do?” I asked myself, searching for a way forward.

We then shifted our focus to offering Favoriot directly to customers. We tried introducing the platform to companies and organizations that might need IoT solutions.

However, once again, a new challenge arose. Many didn’t know how to use the platform. “Are we too early to the market?” I wondered. Maybe, at that time, awareness of IoT among customers wasn’t mature enough.

In the startup world, there’s a concept known as “Product-Market Fit” (PMF). This is the point where your product truly meets the needs of the market.

If you don’t achieve PMF quickly, your product might fail. And I knew that if Favoriot didn’t reach PMF, there was a high chance we would have to shut down operations.

But I didn’t give up. I kept searching for the right customers, those who truly needed what Favoriot offered.

After many trials and errors, we finally found that the best customers for our platform were IoT System Integrators. These were companies or individuals who provided IoT solutions to their own customers. They needed a platform like Favoriot to build IoT applications that could meet the specific needs of their clients.

Finally, Favoriot found its way. We started offering the platform in two models – cloud-based and enterprise-based.

The cloud-based model was for customers who wanted a more flexible solution that could be accessed from anywhere. Meanwhile, the enterprise-based model was more suited for System Integrators who wanted full control over their platform.

This model came with a perpetual license and unlimited API, allowing them to build IoT applications without worrying about the high API costs typically charged by other major platforms like AWS or Azure.

With this discovery, Favoriot began to find its place in the market. I felt a bit of relief, but at the same time, I knew that the journey was far from over.

We still needed to continue innovating and ensuring that the platform remained relevant in an ever-changing industry.

But at least now, I was more confident that Favoriot had a bright future.

This isn’t the end of the story. I will continue to share our journey, how we found other customers, and how we grew Favoriot into one of the leading IoT platforms. But that will be in the next part.

Stay with me on this journey, because I believe that every step we take has its own story that can inspire those striving in the startup world.

In the next part, I will share more about who else became customers of the Favoriot IoT Platform and how we won their hearts.