Talking to real humans is hard, Part 1

As a part of Cornell Tech’s MBA program in our Spring semester we can elect to go through a course called Startup Studio, an expedited curricula of customer discovery, product development, and simply put — building things. The course is currently taught and facilitated by an amazing set of practitioners and doers, namely, Thatcher Bell, Leandra Elberger, Tyler Rhorick, and Josh Hartman.

In our kick-off class for this course, they outlined the curricula and the process we’d undertake for the rest of the semester.

Startup Studio — Curricula Overview

Seemed pretty simple, right?

So Step 1, getting off the island — easy enough — the idea being talk to users, customers, people outside of the Cornell Tech ecosystem. Why? Because we’re biased, we want each other to win (for the most part) and we tell each other what we want to hear.

In the process of creating Ash (follow us on Instagram, please!), a sexual health wellness startup providing in-home self testing kits for STIs among other things, I had spoken to a lot of users about a company that had no name, not seen the light of day, and allowed for me to not yet fully define what we do, because we didn’t do anything at that point.

But as we launched on Valentine’s Day weekend, Ash was no longer this fictitious thing. All of a sudden we had put a line in the sand, and said ‘Hey’ — this is who we are, what we sell, and what we stand for. And so when talking to users in the weeks since launching, taking feedback, opinions, and trying to convince people to try our product felt alot more personal and real.

But because I wanted to take the advice of our seasoned teachers, we’ve hit the streets and started to ask anyone and everyone about sexual health and wellness. Here are some of my takeaways…

1. Ode to my title, talking to real humans is hard! — It’s scary to put yourself out there and be audacious enough to ask for someone’s time. Just do it!
2. Often times, these real humans say no, they say no you can’t have my time — and I don’t want to speak to you. And it’s disheartening and feels like rejection.
3. Often times, these real humans say yes, and they’re surprisingly excited to talk to someone!
4. And about 1/3 of the real humans who say yes, don’t want to talk about their personal sexual health and wellness, and say ‘actually I’m not really comfortable talking about that with a random stranger.’
5. The other 2/3 of the real humans who say yes, are surprisingly ready to share every detail about sexual health and wellness with a complete stranger.
6. As a result we’ve learned a ton — see follow up post coming soon “Talking to real humans is hard, Part 2”.

To approach these strangers here are some quick tips from the past two weeks around how to find the ‘yes’ humans….

• Pro-tip 1: Generally avoid people who are walking/running quickly with purpose, while in NYC this is often the status quo even if you’re not in a rush, more often then not these people don’t want to be stopped as they are trying to get somewhere.
• Pro-tip 2: Get right to the point — tell them exactly what you want from them, how long it should take, and why you’re doing it.
• Pro-tip 3: Don’t dance around awkwardness, embrace it. The amount of times I’ve said — ‘Hey, I’m starting a sexual health wellness startup and was wondering if I could take 2 minutes of your time to ask you some questions to learn more about users behavior and feelings about our potential products’ — I’ve been left with awkward silence or “what did you just say?” My advice, embrace the awkwardness, aknowledge it and say, “I know this can be a taboo topic, but we’re trying to destigmatize sexual health and wellness, which is why I want to talk to you”
• Pro-tip 4: Talk to people that don’t look like you or hang out in the same places you hang out, you’ll learn alot.

—And just to end with my shameless pitch —

Ash Kit

Check out Ash, and reach out if you want to give feedback or talk about sex!

Ash is a holistic sexual health AND wellness brand that celebrates sex while giving you the freedom to explore your sexuality. It is the non-judgemental, pragmatic, and celebratory brand that normalizes sexual health and wellness.

It does not assume anything about your gender identity or sexual preferences; rather it is a place where all people can learn about what makes sex exciting and safe.

Check us out at meetash.com and sign up for our waitlist. We are starting with at-home STI test kits, but, that’s just the beginning — we want to give everyone the freedom to explore their sexuality through educational content, tools, and sexual health assessments.