Iterate Like All Hell

I am someone that truly values moments of reflection. This past summer was a non-stop grind. After graduating from Wharton I took a week to go to the wilderness of Maine with a few close friends, and then I moved back to NYC to build SUSHI with a rockstar team. I was able to take a day off two weeks ago to finally reflect on this summer, and it inspired me to write this post.

“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”- Samuel Goldwyn

What am I about to read.

I’m writing this to share my story of building product this summer, and share a couple lessons that I learned. A lot of people write about iterating and building somewhat after the fact, but I thought it would be fun to take a little time to write while we are in the middle of the grind. I also would like to show how you are guided by a vision and solving a problem, and the way a solution looks is constantly changing. You also lose control of the product, because you’re building for others not your personal ego. I couldn’t imagine SUSHI looking the way it looks now in May, but I’ve never been more fired up in my life. That being said, let’s get in it.

It’s about 70% there.

A joke that one of my best friends (also a founder) makes when I’m frustrated with work is “SUSHI is about 70% there in terms of it’s product.” In other words , “Your assumptions are strong. You are technically filling the need. Just keep grinding and iterating. The difference between a winner and loser in this game is that the loser stops building.”

This is both encouraging and even more frustrating. Because through our first two major iterations he refused to move that 70% number. Then I realized that even when you really nail a product you’re at most 71% there. Iteration is a damn lifestyle at this point. It should be if you care about delivering value. Iteration is not about finding that silver bullet, it is about being consumer centric. Being consumer centric pushes your product to deliver more and more value. The more value you deliver, the more you will grow. This becomes a cycle. Don’t be discouraged by low growth in the beginning. If the trend was that your first build would bring you a ton of growth, we would have a lot more founders than we do. If you ever wanted to know why it’s called a grind… start building and you’ll find out.

What we learned and where we are headed.

When I first wrote about building SUSHI, I was pushing an idea of social layering and automating peer discovery. (Side note, I think social layering is still a great way to build a social product despite our changes.) We started doing tests by manually sifting through survey data and connecting people over Messenger. People were enjoying the experience. This lead to us testing v1 of our product. We had about 120 users in NYC that we put into a random group-chat, they conversed for approximately 48 hours, had to connect with new people they wanted to save, and then do whatever they wanted with that new friend.

This was fun, but we realized that the user experience wasn’t ideal. Let’s say we landed on sending these automated group-chats out every Wednesday. Well if a new user joined SUSHI on a Thursday, they have a week of sitting still. So we packed this feature away and looked to ways of giving users more agency.

We knew that group-chats are fun ways to jump in and out of topics that we love. I have several group-chats with all different friends around topics ranging from tech to rap to city life to street wear. I think it is safe to say that most people have more than one interest they enjoy discussing. We shifted to allowing users to create open group-chats, let anyone join, and give users complete control. This was our v2. We called it “Open Rolls” to keep up our SUSHI based names and we learned a lot. The creation ratio was dope. We had a 1:2 ratio of Open Rolls to users. Rolls would fill up, and when a conversation got going… it really got going. But there were some snags. For one it was incredibly chaotic. For some examples of chats: Emoji only messages, Tinder stories, Uber CEO search, Wine bars NYC, Tonald Drump (no that’s not a typo), and the list goes on. Another lesson from working on Open Rolls as the center of the SUSHI experience, that will help us into v3, is that these chats were usually part of a larger community. Chats could be grouped into communities such as US Politics, NYC Life, and Technology. So what were Open Rolls good for?

Building something meaningful // Tackling Problem 1: How communities are built

During my day off, I was walking through Brooklyn with another one of my close friends. We stumbled into beautiful scenes of community, but one really stuck out. It was a block party where families were playing volleyball, young people were sitting at tables drinking wine, and there was an overwhelming feeling of warmth. We asked what the occasion was and they simply said, “It’s a gorgeous day, and we like to close off the block to celebrate.” I knew that SUSHI had to nurture and build tools to facilitate these types of experiences for communities.

At SUSHI we have come to a point in our iteration process where we are going all in on reimagining how we build communities. Specifically focusing on interest based communities, communities formed due to physical proximity, and the intersection of the two. We definitely have products that serve as inspirations, but we believe there is a huge need we can fill that will lead to fulfilling our vision of bridging online and offline.

A recent chat with a mentor of mine showed that valuable communities are fragmented, and typically are spread across multiple products. I go to Reddit to find out the latest with the NBA. I go to Facebook groups to debate Hip Hop. I go to Twitter for all my tech/vc/startup conversations. I go to LinkedIn to get annoyed. (Just kidding, all love for my friends at LinkedIn) But I think you get the point.

v3 of SUSHI is focused on understanding the needs of different communities, and building according to those insights. Outside of slight design changes, all of the communities on Reddit have all of the same feature set, same with Facebook. Yet, my church Facebook group has a very different need set than my NYC Coffee Club. By rebuilding communities from the ground up, we will be able to tailor features according to the needs of each community we nurture. Becoming the one-stop-shop for the communities you are invested in.

Problem 2: Bringing the art of conversation back to social

I don’t think it’s hard to believe that we have lost the art of conversation within social products. Look at any comment section in Facebook or a thread on Reddit, searching for depth in conversation is brutal unless it’s a tight network of peers. I don’t think we even need to talk about YouTube comments. The closest thing to decent discussion is Twitter, but even there we have problems of abuse and trolls. And a common theme amongst all of these mediums is that participating in discussion is extremely time sensitive. If you are not one of the first ones there or it’s limited to just your friends, you can forget it.

Now we have an answer for what rolls are good for. Within Communities we have a feed that users can post to, but to bring back the art of conversation we don’t allow comments or threads to expand. Instead, you can base an Open Roll off of the post. This takes away our chaos problem and allows for great conversation. Finally, because Open Rolls are capped at 7 users per Roll, it is not nearly as time sensitive. Once a Roll fills up, the next user is subjected to catching up they simply kick off a new Roll and more users are able to start a fresh dialogue.

We solved the problem!

Ha… Ha… Ha… I don’t claim to have any solutions, but I think we are on a path to creating a meaningful social product that people will remember. We are going to start kicking off some growth initiatives to get SUSHI into the hands of more people. I think the product is about 71% there and getting better everyday. I think our team is dedicated, diverse, and physically hungry… a great recipe for building a solid product.

Some Lessons

1- Your early beta testers bring in biases. These are unavoidable unless you’re flush with cash and can pay to bring in testers that aren’t in your network. But odds are that you are cash strapped and want to get the product into hands. This is fine. It just makes your feedback loop harder to sift through.

2- You make a lot of trade offs when trying to ship product and move quickly. You may take on some technical debt. Your design may be lacking (if that’s important to you). Make sure that the trade offs you make are in accordance to your company values. I can transparently say that I made a mistake in valuing getting an experience in hand, without taking the time to properly jam on design. Which is a damn shame, because I live a very design conscious life… going against your own values never creates a winning strategy and we’ve adjusted accordingly.

3- In case you forgot, your team is everything. You’re kidding yourself if you think you can do everything yourself. As a non-technical solo founder, I rely heavily on my team. I’ve taught myself design in order to be of value during builds, I would also like to believe I have a solid product mind… but without my team I’m a Magikarp flopping around wishing my splash would do something. (if you don’t get that reference… who are you)

Last Thoughts

Building a product from scratch is the most fun I’ve ever had. It is also stressful and lonely. Being a solo founder is hard, but having a great team, mentors, and friends makes it very possible. Know when you’re feeling weak… acknowledging your body when it is struggling is humbling and shows true strength. The same thing goes for mental health. Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT IGNORE YOUR MENTAL HEALTH!

I wanted to give you all a very transparent look into how we have been building SUSHI. I think this touches on a good number of points, but it certainly isn’t everything. If you are interested in checking out SUSHI, join a community here!

Thank you for reading, if you would like to chat about anything we are working on, please reach out! I love good conversation and meeting new people. Clap it up, share it up, I’m a hip 22 year old... you can tell because I still use the word hip.