Lean Coffee: Vizualize.Me Case Study

The summer has been busy, and I didn't think I'd be able to get back into Lean Coffee before September, but this session's topic was too good to pass up.

Eugene Woo from Vizualize.Me presented an amazing case study for the group.

Here are a some key notes from the discussion:

• Won StartupWeekend, 2000 signups on the first day
• Thousands of signups per day -- now over 100,000
• After a month, decided to pursue it full-time
• Did a "press push" about winning StatupWeekend, etc. but didn't really take
• Made an Ashton Kutcher sample and pushed to blogs
• Didn't really get much on the blogs
• But major press picked up on it somehow
• Led to articles on FastCompany and Mashable
• "You don't learn when you're building"
• No mockups, built a working prototype quickly
• Important for learning -- wouldn't learn the same things with a mockup
• Customer development can be depressing, but is also exciting
• Priorities are not clear, but at least you know the problems
• 1-3 months away from "true" MVP
• So far 100% equity, seeking a seed round
• 10 or so competitors have emerged
• So far they have a huge branding head start
• 50% conversion rate from signup list, 15-20% fill rate for Wufoo survey
• Lots of wrong assumptions and learning: eg. Thought people wouldn't need to edit inline
• At least 5 phone calls per week, lots of email and surveys
• Use MixPanel for data collection
• Started out collecting everything, but now focusing on a few key metrics at a time
• Biggest potential competition: If LinkedIn builds similar capability
• Jobs market is ripe for disruption
• Best source of leads/signups: LaunchRock, Twitter

Thanks again Eugene for sharing, and looking forward to see Vizualize.me continue to grow and evolve!

Lean Problem Interviewing

Lean Coffee was hosted today by mad scientists in white lab coats (ie. the Big Bang Technology crew).

We talked about the Problem Interview and various tips & techniques, such as:

• Keep a "perimeter" -- don't go too far outside the topic
• Who/Where/What/When/Why questions (from journalism)
• Why validate?
• Are there any customers?
• Assumption: Your plan A won't work
• No validation = no repeatable sales process
• Beware of confirmation bias: Tendency to seek the answers you want to hear
• Problem interview vs. Solution interview (very different)
• Remember: Can pivot around the business model, solve different problems
• Do you need a script? Helps keep things on track - vs. map or outline
• But more open-ended discussion lets you discover a lot more
• Customers are like kids -- easy to lead them, and have them agree with things they don't actually want
• Should be a conversation, not a formal interview
• They'll tell you the symptoms -- you need to determine the problem
• Keep doing the interviews until you know what the answers are going to be
• Problem: Looking for what's "broken"
• Important: What people say vs. what they do is often very different
• Methodology doesn't prevent you from still missing the mark on a "must have" problem
• Failed products lead to the next one -- always learning
• Answers change in different contexts -- anonymously vs in a group (observer effect)
• Maximize the comfort level to get honest answers
• Warm them up: Ask about themselves, make environment safe
• Technique: Parrot back responses
• Lets them confirm, helps them feel more comfortable
• Discover people's motives

Another great session!

Next week I'm going to be in Orlando on business (I know, poor me) so hopefully someone else can take a few notes.

Problems Worth Solving

Today at Lean Coffee Toronto, we discussed the topic of "Problems Worth Solving".

We focused primarily on Customer Development and validation with some great discussion points:

• Relatively few products ever see "the light of day"
• Very few businesses (10%?) make it past the 2-year mark
• There's often a difference between end user and the person who's going to pay, ie. the customer
• Value chain: Need to talk to everyone, but be careful about focusing only on one piece at a time
• Developing a product inside a service business
• Risk of being introverted when you develop in-house
• Risk of entrenching vision and ability to pivot
• Often need to take a step back and talk to people outside
• Customer development
• Validate your problem first
• Then validate your sales process and ecosystem
• Is it acceptable to sell a product that isn't 100% finished yet?
• Yes. Find out if the idea sells. If yes, go to next step.
• Lean: Is there a kisk of killing bad ideas?
• Yes, but very small compared to the risk of building something nobody cares about
• Most devs are not good salespeople naturally
• Need to develop your sales skill set
• Session idea: Lean sales?
• Danger of "sales people" do customer validation -- might get overly optimistic early results
• Using Google ads, etc. to test hypothesis / validate customers
• A few people had tried this
• Kickstarter is essentially the Lean model (but need a US bank account)

Thanks to everyone for their participation, and to Mark at BNOTIONS for hosting and moderating.

Lean Marketing

I attended the brand shiny new Tuesday session of Lean Coffee Toronto today at the awesome BNOTIONS headquarters at Yonge and Bloor.

My summary follows:

• Thursday's session of "How to spend $5,000" apparently wasn't the right approach to the discussion
• (good thing we got a second try :)
• Different parts: Researching vs. Positioning vs. Building Demand
• Can you describe the product in a few short sentences? (ie. the length of a Google Ad)
• Very important to have consistent messaging
• Creating the UVP (unique value proposition) is the hardest part.
• Technique: "It's like X for Y"
• Example: It's like Dropbox for Development Environments
• Pros: You can use all of the marketing efforts from X for free!
• Cons: Helps describe the What, but not necessarily the Why
• 6 steps: (iterative)
• Problem
• Values
• Market
• Ideal consumer
• Competition
• Positioning (USP)
• Technique: 3rd-party re-explanation:
• Explain to someone, then have that person explain it to someone else new
• Tip: Don't try to deliver too many different concepts in your message
• How far along do you need to get to get proper feedback? Idea? Mockups? Prototype?
• Answer: All of the above. Start with an idea and move up from there as you get validation
• Pivoting: Do you change the market or the product? (or both?)

And some Meetup-related stuff:

• Next meetup: Same topic both days again
• Perhaps some attempt to:
• Post reading material prior to meetup (and have people actually read it)
• Keep the discussion on topic via the moderator (a difficult task, to be sure)
• Look at the San Fran Group for topic ideas and literature
• Check out http://dooo.sh/it/ from Big Bang (blog post)

Please comment on this post or email any corrections, additions or updates.

Until next time!

Customer Development

Another really interesting Lean Coffee Toronto this morning.

Here are some of the notes I took from the conversation:

• Always have checks and balances in place
• Verification: The best way to determine product-market fit
• Dave McClure metrics for startups (The "AARRR" presentation)
• Four Steps to the Epiphany (book by Steve Blank) (.pdf file)
• Canadian startups tend to skip this step or do it too late
• Use a rapid prototype instead of just an idea
• Don't redesign the whole thing just based on your first customer's feedback
•  Know when to say no
• Customers may not know what they want
• When first starting have the "seven conversations"
• Measure. Validate.
• Look for lovers and haters -- anything that evokes a strong response should be investigated further

Some personal thoughts on the subject:

• You can learn a lot from "negative" feedback
• If someone tells you they won't use your product, ask, "Why not?"
• You may have a good idea or product, but lack the ability to explain it well enough
• The most successful products are the ones people actually understand
• It can take a long time and many iterations to figure out your "pitch"
• Don't stop working on it until you can tell people "get it" -- for better or for worse
• If they are indifferent, you have a problem (mentioned by Andrew near the end of the meetup)

Great conversation again everyone! An hour just isn't long enough. We always seem to be just getting into the good stuff when wrapping up :)