Accelerating WorkHound Week 5

5 min readJul 13, 2015

Getting the first beta partner

Quick Overview:

At WorkHound, we’re tackling a big issue in the trucking industry: the 97% driver turnover rate. We’re building a platform to allow drivers to share feedback with their companies. Companies then receive the aggregated feedback to improve the driver experience.

This is our weekly post highlighting our learnings and actions each week in the Straight Shot accelerator out of Omaha.

Other Updates:
Week 1 Update // Week 2 Update // Week 3 Update // Week 4 Update

Week 5

Securing the first beta partner

In startup world, there’s an oft used phrase — “no one wants to hear their baby is ugly”, in regards to receiving product feedback for your own startup.

Yes, it sucks to hear people bash what you’ve built, but it’s part of the process.

For us at WorkHound, we are desperate for that feeling. Tell us it’s ugly, tell us what will make it pretty so that you’ll play with it.

Since we’re focused on selling to trucking companies (B2B) and our product entails gathering employee feedback, it’s tough to even get the baby out there for someone to hold.

This week we secured our first beta partner, which was a huge win. This partner is a smaller trucking company that will gain early access to the WorkHound platform and provide critical feedback in the early stages of the product development.

Why this matters

-We need product feedback. We need to make sure our approach and product creates value for the companies we work with. If we don’t we shouldn’t be in business.

-Simulating the onboarding process of a new client is extremely helpful. Understanding what they truly want, what makes sense, what’s confusing and what it takes to find success is a process.

By working with a handful of trucking companies with varying size we will be able to learn a lot early before we build something no one wants.

Specific asks get specific results

Many of us often get asked “How can I help?”, but we don’t utilize the power to the fullest. People truly do want to help, but I’ve learned the impact can happen when the asks are short, specific and simple.

In the past, I’ve asked general requests, but they rarely were fulfilled. But then I started to approach these opportunities with specific markets, specific asks and specific action items. Basically, the goal is to create a yes or no decision for the person helping you. It’s either, “yes I can help” or “no I can’t”. Pretty simple.

I’ll give you two examples:

•I’m looking to connect with someone at a company that has turnover.

vs.

•I’m looking to connect with a high-level HR decision maker at an truckload carrier that has 100–250 drivers. I want to learn about their driver turnover and how they tackle the problem currently. An email introduction or recommendation of who I can reach out to would be extremely helpful.

Both ask for the same thing, but the second approach makes the request a simple yes or no. This approach has helped me receive a number of introductions or advice on issues we work through with ease. It’s amazing what happens when you ask the right questions.

Intros for intro emails

To amplify the help of others even further, a difference-maker has been writing the intro email for whoever offers to connect us with someone.

Instead of saying:

•“Hi could you intro me to X? K Thx Bai!”

I’ve started to put the bulk of the work on myself:

•Could you connect me with X? Here’s an intro note you can forward on:

“Hi there,

Max Farrell here. I’m co-founder of WorkHound, a software product focused on tackling the driver turnover problem in the trucking industry by giving drivers a platform to share feedback with the company.

We’re launching out of Straight Shot, a startup accelerator in Omaha and are looking to connect with carriers to learn about how they are currently tackling this issue, to share our product’s approach and our process to help improve driver retention in the industry. Any help will be tremendously valuable!”

This approach makes someone else’s efforts reduced to 3 actions: copying, creating the email with the other contact and pasting. Can’t beat that!

We’ve had an increase in successful introductions as a result.

Radio hustle

Using the above intro approach, it’s helped us not only in leads for prospects, but also lessons, resources and press support as well.

One extremely valuable connection was to Mark Willis, a Sirius XM radio host on “Road Dog”, one of the most popular satellite radio channels and shows with an average audience of 1 million listeners. After speaking with Mark, he’s invited me on to speak about truck driver turnover, technology in trucking and what we’re building at WorkHound.

It’s a huge opportunity and I’m thrilled for our team!

Wrapping Up

A week of product development, business development, hype and pitching are ahead of us, but with one beta partner secured and momentum on a few fronts we’re pumped for what’s ahead.