Eligma, the Lean Startup: The customer as the main compass
Today’s commerce does not suffer from a lack of offer but its excess; the offer is not only huge but scattered over many different websites, which makes finding what we want extremely difficult and time-consuming. Eligma is developing a platform that will make your selection faster with AI-searches through all the websites at once. Its other features will enable you to make an inventory of what you own, monitor the value of your items, suggest the best time to sell them and easily list them on selling sites for resale if you wish. Such solutions support the general awareness that assets should circulate effectively, and cater to our challenging economic times: with Eligma’s solution, every household will be able to participate in a buying/selling process that saves time and money, and turn redundant items into a source of additional income.
These ideas arise from a vision to make buying and selling more effective. They led to the founding of the Eligma startup, driven by eminent names from the industry and commerce. Eligma CEO Dejan Roljic is an internationally recognized entrepreneur in the startup field. He founded a series of ABC Accelerators, the first one in Slovenia in 2015, then in Germany and in Silicon Valley in 2016. ABC Accelerator has accelerated more than 80 startups and raised more than 50 million USD.
As we witness every day, a great idea is not enough for success. What counts is the method of verifying if the startup’s product vision is shared by its future customers and adapting it accordingly. This is the essence of the Lean Startup methodology by Eric Ries. It also forms the foundations of Eligma’s product development, which we would like to present to you in a bit more detail.
Although startups work under time constraints, developing a sellable product should always be a process. It is a journey with a single correct course — the one dictated by the customer. At Eligma, we aim to develop solutions to make people’s lives easier, so this definitely makes a lot of sense. Are we developing something that others will find useful and how to measure that?
One of the challenges is that no two buyers are the same. Some people are very clear about the specifications they require in a product and all they wish to find is the best price. Some would appreciate to know if they can get a competitive product with the same or even better qualities at the same or even better price. Some people are loyal to specific major brands and some are flexible, but do not know what else is out there and if it is any good. Eligma’s premise is that everyone wishes to save time when looking for best deals online and that many people would also need some additional information to be able to make the best choice for them. To test this, we developed an MVP.
An MVP (or a Minimum Viable Product) is a provisional product that startups develop in order to test if their product development caters to the needs of the customer. Our goal is to develop an AI shopping assistant who would get to know the customer and suggest highly personalized choices on the basis of their preferences as well as some other alternatives in terms of the best quality-to-price ratio like any good assistant or friend would. The MVP product is never the finished version. We will use it to find if people can relate to and are in need of the services it offers. The aim is for early adopters and any other interested parties out there to be able to see its functionalities and give well-appreciated feedback so that we can take the development into the best direction possible. The best direction possible is not what WE think, but what YOU require!
Eligma’s MVP will be launched on 5 September. Our demo personal shopping assistant will aim to get to know you and help you make the most suitable shopping choice based on your specifications — initially with one item category, but there will be more added later on. We therefore invite you to interact with it as much as possible! Our AI is looking forward to meeting you and getting to know you!
Yes, we are a startup, but precisely for this reason, we are building step by step, one feature at a time. In this way, the Eligma team aims to develop products and services that would stand the test of time and be tailored to what our users truly want and need.
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