Accelerating WorkHound Week 9
Big whales, tasty fish and the first customer
Whether you’re hunting big whales or tasty fish, the goal is to eat.
(Quick overview of this blog series at the bottom of page)
Big whales vs. tasty fish
Throughout the accelerator, we’ve often been asked, “who is your ideal customer?”
We initially focused on trucking companies, but there are 1.2 million companies in the US. Then we have to ask, who really has the problem (high driver turnover)? After picking companies with more than 20 drivers, that number narrows to 40,000 companies. But then who will be our early adopters? That’s where deciding what size segment of companies to pursue becomes important.
There are three buckets companies fall in for our efforts at WorkHound:
1. Fewer than 100 drivers (they usually attempt to solve this on their own due to small size)
2. 100–1000 drivers (they solve the problem by hiring consultants)
3. 1000+ drivers (they have internal IT teams that attempt to build their own solutions)
Out of these three, we decided to focus on trucking companies between 100–1000 companies, with our beta partners having fewer than 500 drivers. These groups have a tough time scaling the personal feel of a smaller company, but don’t have enough resources to build their own internal tools.
Others argue that we should go after the biggest trucking companies in the space, the top 100 of the industry, but Andrew and I both know the enterprise sales world is a tough one. They’re big whales, they’re exciting to hunt and if you get one, you can eat for a while. But you can also starve trying to catch one.
We’d rather fish where they bite. There are companies that like the direction WorkHound is going and provide great direction as we keep building.
Some people are whale killers. They live for the rush of harpooning a big one.
We’ll keep fishing. We’ll keep catching. Ultimately we’ll build a bigger boat, but right now the goal is to eat. And we’re hungry.
First customer
Our team got a huge win last week as we secured our first customer.
It takes a bold, forward thinking company to commit to a product early on, but they believe in the vision and they know we’ll work our ass off to create value for them.
Moments like this call for celebration, but drive us to work harder than ever because companies are counting on us.
A trucker’s story
I spent most of last week outside of Austin, TX after getting an invite to the Texas Trucking Association’s annual conference. These conferences are built on relationships with some people attending their 20th Texas conference. The conference had a mix of education, entertainment, relationship building and powerful stories.
One story blew me away:
This is Daniel Phillips, a professional truck driver for Genox Transportation out of Texas. He’s been a driver for 46 years and was recognized as the Texas driver of the year by the Texas Trucking Association. But that’s not all, he has had 6 million accident free miles. Think about that. 46 years on the road and no accidents. It’s mind blowing.
His story got better. While wearing possibly the best-looking outfit of the entire conference, he shared his story of how he got started in the industry at the age of nine riding with his father (who was also a driver). His dad would let him back up the truck to docks at only nine years old! To add to that, he put his three kids through college working as a driver the entire time.
Too often we get caught up in the nitty gritty of building a product that we forget the stories that fueled our initial efforts to get started. This was a welcome reminder that there’s some amazing drivers out there, they deserve a voice and their stories deserve to be told.
Quick Overview
(See Week 1 post for more details)
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 Update // Week 6 Update // Week 7 Update// Week 8 Update
Want to keep in touch?
We’d love to touch base if we can help or elaborate more on our experience:
Email: max@workhoundapp.com
Web: WorkHoundapp.com // FB: WorkHound // Instagram: WorkHound
Twitter: @WorkHoundApp // @MaxOnTheTrack // @_kirps
LinkedIn: Max Farrell // Andrew Kirpalani
