You don’t need a product to make your first sale.
Our first sale at ErasmusInn involved an iPhone, a spreadsheet of hosts in Ankara and the technical knowledge to merge calls. We were approached by AISEC Ankara asking whether we had a room in Ankara for an intern coming on the AISEC program from Pakistan.
While our tech team was busy coding our MVP we were busy trying to prove proof of concept. As we are a marketplace with supply and demand for rentable mid-term accommodation we were advised that a spreadsheet would do the job.
We had many hypotheses to prove. The first one was that Abida from Pakistan would be willing to pay 1 months of rent and a commission to secure her accommodation in a new city she never seen before actually seeing the place. The second one was that the host from Ankara will be willing to pay a commission to us for guaranteeing that we’d get her room booked for at least 1 month.
We asked friends of friends whether they had an available room to rent for a couple of months, we searched Facebook Groups and classifieds like Craigslist making numerous Skype calls with potential hosts showing us the place on video so we knew we were talking to somebody who actually had a room to rent!
Finally we managed to find someone looking to rent a room with a few mutual interest with the intern looking for a room which developed into one of our differentiator features, matching roommates with similar interests.
She agreed to the pay the rent price and commission for securing the room but she wanted to speak to the host before hand. At that time we didn’t have a product yet that could actually process a credit card nor allow the two to speak to each other. We offered to connect the two together by phone by merging the call. There we were calling Pakistan and merging the call to a host in Ankara that we only met online. They spoke for a few minutes with us in the background ready to intervene if needed. Next day the girl made a SWIFT transfer to our bank account and there it was our first SALE!
We are constantly learning from our customers and making improvements to build a great product. I am very lucky to have an awesome team supporting and believing in our vision to bring safe rentable accommodation to the world.
The idea of this post is that entrepreneurs should get out in the street with the intention of reaching proof of concept without waiting for an MVP to be developed. In 2016 I decided to share my stories with other entrepreneurs hopefully many more to come in the upcoming months.
At Erasmusinn.com we are digitalising inventory of accommodation available for mid-term renting while attending a study exchange, internship and/or work placement abroad.
Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.
