On Friday 16th September 2011 I took
TweetPivot along to
Lean Startup Machine, London. I knew I had a great product but now wanted to accelerate customer development. I know, I know, this is back-to-front; but I'd started writing the application way before I became aware of the Lean Startup movement.
I pitched the idea and my starting hypothesis and was accepted as one of the ten ideas to form teams around. I was joined by two others, later reduced to one -
Prashant Gandhi. Together we started testing our hypothesis and, within about 2 hours, realised we were wrong! The potential customer we thought had a specific problem simply didn't. However, good interview technique lead us to uncover a different potential customer upon whom we could test the same problem.
Pivot number one (Customer Segment).
Pivots two and three (both Customer Need) involved keeping the same customer type and altering our 'angle' of the problem. The outcome was hypotheses with positive qualitative feedback. Now we needed a larger sample set to test on.
Overnight we ran 2 concurrent, yet disparate, landing pages on
Unbounce. This time window meant we were essentially testing the US market rather than the UK one, but the results were reassuring. Both pages had a conversion rate of around 10%. OK, not statistically significant, but still a good nod that we were on the right track.
What did we learn?
Our MVP prototype is very important in the customer development process. Even though we described our solution correctly and in detail, it wasn't until customers actually touched it that they got their 'eureka moment'. We saw this as a flaw in our technique but were convinced by numerous mentors that it wasn't. We just had to realise that it was important and factor it in to our process.
Customer Development gets easier the more you do it. If you're a technical founder then, chances are, you'll find this daunting. I'm a very sociable guy and will introduce myself to almost anyone. However, it took some considerable effort for me to get past the idea that I was selling something and that I was a terrible individual for invading their personal space to do this. Yes, ultimately, you are selling something; but realise that you're trying to find a mutually beneficial outcome. It's a cooperative effort.
Practice your interviews on other participants. The venue will be filled with people in exactly the same state of worry as you. Take an easy step and ask other teams' members if you can practice on them. Then reciprocate.
You may think that you're questioned all of your assumptions, but you'll be wrong. As my
G.F.D.A. wallpaper says "Question F***ing Everything".
Thanks
I couldn't write a blog post about LSM without offering thanks to all those involved. I can honestly say that, from an ROI perspective, this is the best money I've spent on TweetPivot. I had contact with almost everybody involved at some point during the weekend. So, to the organisers, the mentors and the other participants "
Thank you!".
What's Next?
- Prashant and I are working out terms in order to work together on TweetPivot.
- I've engaged an adviser for TweetPivot and hope to officially announce him later this week.
- We're looking to expand our team - blog post coming soon.
- Customer Development has continued apace. We've been interviewing almost every day since Lean Startup Machine and the feedback just keeps getting better.
- We'll be issuing private betas to some customers soon so that we can add to our bucket of validated learning.
Finally
