Mommy Assistant…Or Is That Your Real Name? Weeks 2 & 3
It has been an awesome two weeks in the world of Mommy Assistant. Though we hope that all weeks will be pivotal to our company’s success, these two weeks exceeded our expectations. And when I say exceeded, I mean EXCEEDED!!!
Quick Recap: Our company, Mommy Assistant, is a matching service that finds the best assistant to manage household tasks for busy families. Stephanie Feltus has been running the business for years, but it is time to scale, rebrand, and ultimately create an entirely new business.
Assumptions Week
We started out our second week determined to talk to people and see what their true pain points are when it comes to household chores. In week 1, we attended a seminar that highlighted startups failing if they don’t find out what consumers truly need. That made us worry a little, so we gathered an unbiased group of mostly dads and a few moms.
From this group, we gained some interesting insights. Dads just might be our secret target market…
Here’s a few of the things we learned:
· Dads are often the first to ask for help with household chores because…they don’t want to do them (not saying moms do want to do chores, but dads were pretty vocal).
· A lot of dads feel less guilt in delegating these tasks, whereas many moms feel they should be able to do it all.
· Everyone values the vetting process.
· There is practically no system in place when it comes to dividing household chores between spouses.
Thank goodness these findings really validated the need for our business, which was relief. Throughout the week, we collected surveys and analyzed more data that confirmed a need for household assistance. The surveys gave us insight into what services are valued the most, willingness to pay for the vetting process, and qualities people search for in an assistant.
New Name, New Look, New Logo…Entirely New Company!
While testing our assumptions, we were also working with our amazing designer, Sam, to rebrand Mommy Assistant. The name “Mommy Assistant” is great; don’t get me wrong. However, many Mommy Assistant customers are married without kids, single, or have kids that are grown up and have moved out of the house. We want a brand that speaks to all of these groups without sending the message that you have to be a mom to use or provide our service.
Stephanie and Sam have been working on the name for a long time prior to entering the Straight Shot accelerator but the big reveal happened during these two weeks. Our new name is…drumroll please…Robyn Household Assistant.
Why Robyn?
We decided on Robyn because we want our brand to represent a bird (robin) taking care of a nest. That’s exactly what our assistants are doing by taking care of people’s homes. We decided the assistants are going to be called providers or “robyns” and we came up with a very fitting tagline: “Keeping your nest in order.”
Pretty clever, don’t you think? This led us into week 3: Development 101.
Development 101 Week
Our website is key to the success of our business. It will be where families and providers are matched through our matching software that will pair people together based on location, availability, household tasks, and pay range. Without the website matching service, we have to do everything by hand. This would mean our service is slow to grow, expensive, and can’t reach as many families or providers.
Stephanie and I would consider ourselves “low-tech” entrepreneurs with limited knowledge about all things coding, web development, etc. Luckily, we were introduced to our incredible team at The Garage, a web development firm Stephanie has been working with for a long time.
We visited The Garage with the intention to have a good discussion about what needs to happen in the upcoming weeks. We were ready to get started and needed to get the development process going ASAP. Fortunately, The Garage had the same sense of urgency and initiated a kick-off event where we met the entire team who would be working on the website. Soon, we were bouncing around ideas about all of the possibilities for the site. The creativity and pure energy could be felt throughout the room. Stephanie and I could hardly sit still as the team showed us how they were going to design, code, and use their technological genius to make the Robyn vision come true. It would take 4 weeks made up of hours sprinting to get the website done, but it was going to happen. We walked out of there feeling on top of the world.
LET’S TAKE A MOMENT AND APPRECIATE WHAT JUST HAPPENED IN 2 WEEKS!
I know we are going through an accelerator program, but Stephanie and I are moving at the speed of light. In just two weeks, we tested our assumptions, finalized an entirely new brand, and laid the framework for our state-of-the-art matching website. We achieved all of this while also attending incredible workshops and meeting some of Omaha’s very best business leaders and mentors.
Coming up next:
Marketing, recruiting providers, getting advice, and doing everything we can to make Robyn soar. Can Stephanie and Claire keep the momentum going? Keep reading!
