Building Our Customer Foundation at MiniCorp
Working on the Right Products
MiniCorp has now been running as a full startup studio for the best part of a year now. It’s been a complete rollercoaster ride with many ups and downs. We work with early age companies. Helping them define their product, crafting it correctly and launching it. Because they’re so young, a hell of a lot of work has to go into them.
In order to be adopted, a heavy push and constant iterations have to happen depending on the market feedback.
When I started MiniCorp, I tried to plan our strategy as best I could. Things change in our industry in a heartbeat. The idea or product that was stellar 3 months ago may not be now. It might lose it’s value because someone has beaten you to the punch or it’s no longer the right time to launch.
That’s why my strategy was and still is to work with only the ideas we believe will gain traction and become successful. This is because of two reasons.
People Base Minicorp’s Success on Our Previous Launches
When a new client contemplates approaching MiniCorp, the first thing I would expect them to do would be to review our previous work. Who we’ve worked with, what we’ve launched and how those companies are progressing.
This can be a catch 22, we can bring a product so far but it’s up to the founders of that product to drive it forward. We haven’t taken equity in any of our clients products thus far but we still feel we’re throughly invested in the product. That said, it’s up to them to drive the engagement. We’ll help in any shape or form we can.
Working on Products That Change Things
This isn’t a philanthropic statement where I want to heal the world and cuddle baby seals but it is one of my core morals. Baked into my core being is the following:
We have a finite amount of time on this world. You can have an infinite amount of money, friends, companies etc. Time is our most precious commodity and I treat it as such.
To me, that means the work that we do in MiniCorp has to be impactful and worthy of the time spent building it. If we work just for the pay cheque we’re not doing great work. I prefer to recommend clients onto other agencies if I don’t believe in their idea.
This might sound very cocky but it ensures that the team and products coming out of MiniCorp are exceptional and full of passion. I’d rather the team at MiniCorp make huge changes in the world than work for a pay cheque.
This also means that one day could arrive where we have no work on our desks but I’d rather take that bet and move on than do something we’re not passionate about. Believe me, I know the bills need to be paid.
What’s for Year Two?
What we’re doing seems to be working. We’re working with great products like 100Minds, UXTraining and UniTuition. We’ve even launched our own product Popped.
We’re getting feedback like:
I love MiniCorp. Attitude, quality and attention to detail. I couldn’t ask for anything more. Highly recommended — Colman Walsh, UXTraining
I want to take what we’ve learned over year one and apply those learnings to year two. We need dog food what we preach to our clients.
In software circles, dogfooding refers to the practice of using your own products.
I’m also on a massive marketing push for MiniCorp right now. I want all startups to know we exist, view the work we’ve done and come and work with us. This is vesting itself by creating The MiniCorp Show, major social media pushes and trying to get more opportunities to talk to startups about who we are and what we do.
If you love what we do, I’d really appreciate it if you spread the word.
