Introducing the Firmhouse Toolbox
Giving you everything you need to set up, run and track your experiments. Fast.
Why we decided to make the Toolbox
Experimenting quickly is crucial for making innovation work. Validated learning is the cornerstone of lean, and the quicker you experiment the quicker you can learn. And the quicker you can learn, the faster you can work towards a product that will be of real value to customers, and they will be willing to pay for. Doing experimentation fast is vital. But it’s also one of the most difficult feats to accomplish when trying to innovate in a corporate environment.
At Firmhouse, we’ve worked with many corporate innovation teams and kept bumping into the same challenges. In one of our previous blog posts we dubbed them ‘the fabulous five’: Marketing, legal, compliance, IT and finance. In the end, it comes down to the fact that processes at large organizations are made to fit large projects, not small ones. They are made to serve in big batches, with large budgets and many people involved. And they are made for products of which the target group is already known, and customer needs can be determined upfront. But this process starts slowing things down incredibly when the goal is to discover a new market by conducting small experiments with only a few hundred sign-ups.
How have big organizations been dealing with this till now? By hiring innovation consultants or offering their employees lean startup workshops. All valuable information and experience, until they try to implement it in an organization that still has the culture and processes of a big corporation. We believe we need to do more to unleash innovation within mature organizations than expert support and training. Innovation teams in corporations have to be enabled to act faster in their particular culture. They need the right frameworks and technology that help them to deal with ‘the fabulous five’.
Our solution: The Firmhouse Toolbox
The Firmhouse Toolbox empowers large organizations to speed up their experimentation process, by allowing them to set up, approve and execute experiments in a matter of days rather than weeks. We help them set everything up, after which teams are good to go experimenting by themselves. They can make their own landing pages, set up their own payment experiments and analyse their own data without external expert or technical support. And if teams need support at any point we’re there to help.
The Firmhouse Toolbox offers all the tools innovation teams at corporations need to conduct experiments while helping them to navigate ‘the fabulous 5’, and work together seamlessly in a ‘plug & play’ manner. Our tools are all safe, encrypted, and compliant with EU-data protection laws. They let you easily apply your own branding via customization, and do everything in one central environment, from setting up experiments to sending automated follow-up emails. All in a clear overview where the tools and an overview of all the running experiments can be accessed and consumed easily. Next to that, our Toolbox facilitates easy communication between team members, coaches, program managers and other stakeholders.
Read next: We build businesses that last
So, what’s in there?
Our Toolbox contains the following tools:
Airstrip
Airstrip helps you easily set up and run landing page and early adopter sign-up experiments. You can provide your own designs or get up and running quickly with our predefined templates. With Airstrip you can arrange all automated emails with people who signed up, by customising multiple follow-up emails. Airstrip also allows you to gather more than just email addresses. Handy for if you might want to send real products and need to get postal addresses. All in a EU-data protection compliant environment.
GoMonthly
GoMonthly helps you to start selling and renting directly to your consumers in a subscription-based way, rather than having to rely on traditional retail channels and a one-time sales moment. We help you to test a subscription model when your internal departments cannot offer it yet, and take care of any other financial processes your legal or financial department would have to support. This includes invoicing, VAT/tax registration and customer support. GoMonthly supports the main payment methods including iDeal, Credit Card, SEPA-incasso, and local payment methods including Sofort.
Formbox
Formbox lets you quickly publish a form online for use on your current website or landing page, without any back-end code requirements. Just create some HTML, include the form, and there you go. Formbox allows you to gather valuable customer data. All in a safe and encrypted environment.
Venturepulse
VenturePulse empowers you to manage and track the progress of startup and innovation teams. It allows you to know what teams are doing at any time, connect your teams to the right mentors, and collect quick feedback from mentors after meetings. You can set and track milestones for teams, and send weekly reminders to mentors for updates. Includes optional email and Slack notifications.
Datayard
Datayard enables teams to perform basic but key analysis on how customers use their product without having to become or hire a data analyst or Google Analytics expert. It allows you to understand user behaviour better by viewing timelines of each visitor’s’ behaviour. You can set out ideal usage paths and compare them to the ones actually taken. Datayard will automatically generate AARRR-metrics (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, Referral) to understand how your app is doing business-wise.
Interested?
Hit us up on Twitter @Firmhouse or at the Lean Startup Summit in London next week to get to know more about how we can help you and your team increase your pace of experimenting.
