SPRK: Flares without fire

/img/SPRK.jpg

Flares are extreme temperature fires that happen to produce some light for signaling. Great as an infrared countermeasure, awful during fire season. I led product management / development of a clean-tech electronic replacement.

Efforts:

  • Prototyping proof-of-concept, proving offer validation.
  • Designing and developing MVP, working with supply chain and manufacturing to reduce costs.
  • Performing market discovery and customer segmentation.

Wins:

  • Getting a beachhead / MOU with emergency responders.
  • Reducing costs ~30% in value engineering.

Learnings:

  • Balancing the MAYA (Most Advanced Yet Acceptable) principle.
  • Even a great product with waiting customers will die on the vine without investors.