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Chris Shepard - How to Create and Launch Your Own Digital Product

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Highlights

Are you dreaming of starting your own product? Chris Shepard shares his expertise in UX design and how he applied it to make the dream of starting his own design tech startup, Wisiwig, a reality. Learn from his experience and the advice he has for those wanting to launch their own product, along with what steps and strategies he put in place to get the funding needed to propel Wisiwig forward. Read the article below and listen to more of Chris’s great advice in the full episode!

📌 Get specific in your scope and your plan!

When launching a product or business, determine what specific problem you are solving and if it is truly a business that will make you money. Do your homework through market and user research to keep you on the right track as you create and launch your product.

🔥 Where can you secure funding without a rich uncle?

Ask friends and family for a gift of money to support your business. Lean into your network to make more connections to find other founders that have launched a successful product or business and ask them for help. Reach out through cold email because you never know what connection will help you to raise the funds you need!

💡 Understand the impact!

Creating and launching a product is not easy. It will take dedication, persistence, time, resources, and energy. Before diving in, create a plan to make sure that your lifestyle will not be impacted in a way you are unwilling to live with. This adventure into launching a product can be extremely fulfilling if you understand the overall impact on your life upfront.

How to Create and Launch Your Own Digital Product

In episode 46 of The Product Design Podcast, Seth Coelen interviews Chris Shepard, Cofounder & CEO at Wisiwig, the collaborative browser design tool to achieve pixel-perfect UI design.

During our chat, Chris shares how a free meal led him to his first UX Design role, how he decided to take the entrepreneurial route and start his own product, and what you can learn from his journey from ideation to launching Wisiwig! This episode is filled with fantastic advice if you have ever considered creating and launching your own product!

Chris Shepard and Seth Coelen on The Product Design Podcast

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In this article, we will focus on advice from Chris on how to launch your own product!

Launch Your Product Like a Pro

Chris has been in UX design for over 10 years, primarily focusing on enterprise B2B SaaS companies. His area of expertise has been working on making work lives better and more straightforward to accomplish more. A little over a year ago, Chris decided to become an entrepreneur and launch a design tech startup called Wisiwig. During the last year, Chris participated in a startup accelerator program, and they are ready to take Wisiwig to the next level. In this episode, he shares his advice on starting your own product and what he has done to get funding.

🔥 Forget the product and focus on the business you want to build.

Consider whether people will be willing to use and pay for your product. Do market research and testing before building out the entire product. Talk to people, and show them your website or mockups in Figma for the product to gauge interest. Are you really solving a problem that will entice them to engage?

🎯 Narrow your scope.

Determine the most important and valuable feature to launch first. You can add more value later with other features! Another option to consider is moving forward with a Chrome extension rather than a full-blown product.

"Anyone can start their own product, but I think there's a big difference between starting your own product versus starting your own business."

💸 Consider multiple opportunities for fundraising.

Asking for help can be challenging, but it will help you to succeed. Reach out to family and friends for money as a gift to help support you. Get help from founders who have done this already. Tap into your network to get introductions where you can share meaningful reasons investors should pay attention to you. Never underestimate the power of cold email - there may be a lower success rate, but you never know who will be the key investor to help you bring your dream to life!

🤔 Think about the lifestyle of an entrepreneur - is it for you?

Creating and launching your own product or business can be challenging and demand time, resources, and energy. Think about how that will impact other areas of your life. If this route is energizing and exciting, you can always think about your overall lifestyle and what you need to do to manage everything on your plate to ensure it is a rewarding experience.

Chris Shepard
"I don't think you should ever stop thinking about - is this the lifestyle that you want to have? If not, what changes can you make in order to have a sustainable life?"

Thank you so much, Chris!

Thanks to Chris for sharing his valuable knowledge and insight on creating and launching a digital product. The road is long and not always easy, but he has found it very rewarding and learned so much along the way. His advice will help others looking to go down the same path to launching their own product. We are grateful that he shared so much valuable advice on how to approach launching your own product!

Listen to the complete episode on The Product Design Podcast, which includes a deeper look into what inspired Wisiwig and Chris's approach to prioritizing features when building your product. Don't forget to follow Chris on LinkedIn and Twitter, and check out what Wisiwig is up to on YouTube and their website!

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Where to find Chris

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