Building A Business At Night
How We‘re Building FreeColoradoCamping.com (Part One)
by Developer Glen Elkins & Designer Garrett Kroll
About the “On The Side” Series
On The Side is an ongoing series documenting the challenges, decisions, and successes of a side project that dreams to get bigger. It’s our attempt at giving an honest and transparent narrative of the challenges and opportunities confronted when creating a product from scratch.
The Initial Problem
We just wanted to go camping, really.
It was Wednesday evening when my wife and I decided we’d go find some adventure for the weekend. With two days to plan, we certainly weren’t going to get a spot at any of the reserved campgrounds in Colorado (which is a ridiculous concept anyway), and we didn’t feel like staying in a campground that required a nightly fee.
So I dedicated my research to finding spots on public land that would be great for pitching a tent.
That task was frustrating to say the least. All I wanted to know was where could I go camping (for free) in Colorado? I was inundated with information I didn’t care about, in a format I couldn’t navigate.
I used Google’s Keyword planner and searched camping forums to do some quick problem validation:
As it turns out, lots of people just wanted to know where they could go camping. This was the validation I needed to feel confident moving forward, so I pitched Glen the idea of a web app that would help people find places to camp in Colorado.
Avoiding Previous Mistakes
When Garrett an I started discussing product ideas to build, we had a few false starts. We started a lot of projects, and things always fizzled out over time. I think a couple of things happened:
Saying “Yes” Too Soon
At first, we were so anxious to build something that we didn’t vet our ideas. We came up with a lot of ideas, all of which felt really great. Before I knew it, we had decided on a product, before doing any market research.
After a few false starts, we decided on a more deliberate approach.
When Garrett mentioned an app to help find free campsites, I was skeptical. “Doesn’t that already exist?” I thought. We did some initial research together, and found a few sites that were similar, but didn’t accomplish what we had in mind the way we wanted. There was opportunity there.
At the very least, we could design and build a site that we’d use.
Too Slow to Start
One thing that did stick out to me right away was that the technology we’d need to build the site was very familiar to me. I got really excited about that, because I knew if we could get started, I could really bang out the functionality really quickly by leveraging stuff I’d used in the last handful of web apps I’d built.
With the research out of the way, and the technology already vetted, I knew we were ready.
Other People’s Problems
In order to work on something on the side, you need to be really passionate about it. In the past, we tried to solve other people’s problems. A book swap app for college kids, a group texting app, etc…
These may be problems worth solving, but if I’m not passionate about solving the problem, it’s not going to happen.
We’re are most passionate about solving their own problems.
I need that passion to drive me on those late nights when I come home from work and need to get started on the side. There’s little financial incentive to starting a product as a P.O.C., which is the biggest deterrent. “Why would I work on this instead of making some extra money on the side?” Passion.
The Proof of Concept (P.O.C.)
We both had ideas for what the app could do right away. After reviewing some of the sparse competition, we generated a ton of feature ideas.
The Bare Minimum
I had a million ideas for what this web app could become, but it we had to stay focused and deliver a single, problem-solving feature.
I had been suffering through finding camp sites by searching Google or appealing to forums for far too long. What I really wanted, and what I believed others would find valuable, was a resource that visually displayed free campsites in a quick and easy way.
I wanted to solve 2 initial problems:
Where can I camp for free? How can I get there?
Google Maps had integrated directions, wouldn’t pose a learning curve for our users, and was easily customizable. It would be a great fit for our initial interface.
Our P.O.C. Goals
We decided three things were absolutely essential:
#1 Gauge Interest
We needed to understand if this was a problem worth solving. Did people need something like this? Were there others in Colorado that would find value in an app that made it easier to find free camping?
#2 Verify the Problem-Solution Fit
Just because the problem of ‘finding free camping’ existed, didn’t mean our map-based product was the answer. We had to validate that our app was solving a market problem and providing value to our users. We could do this my analyzing feedback and tracking how many users were returning to the site
#3 Get Feedback
Assuming we got some eyeballs on the P.O.C, we needed an easy way to hear back from people. Did we miss the mark? Was there something missing? We decided that in order to drive future product development, we needed something more than our instincts and opinions: we needed to hear from our users and see what they were feeling.
Our To Do List
- Branding (needs to look respectable, but not finished)
- Domain (needs to be straightforward and aid in the initial SEO).
- Add campsites (we need just “enough” data to provide value to early adopters)
- Develop Google Map UI (the key feature and what will be our differentiator)
- Add a feedback form (use Google Forms to minimize effort)
- Build an admin panel (and use to delegate content-management tasks)
A Race Against The Clock
Yeah we’re both excited, but lots of people get excited about an idea just to drop it for the next shiny thing they think of. We were in a race against our constantly deteriorating motivation. I was convinced that if we didn’t have something out on the web in a week or two, we’d lose all motivation.
What might start as fun would quickly turn into a chore. At this point, we didn’t even know if anyone would want or use our product. It was essential that we got started right away and got it into front of some eyeballs.
Something key happens when you share your work. You become accountable for it. Things feel more “real.” It’s harder to drop a project when it feels real. That’s one reason we’re doing this blog series.
After we got a P.O.C. in front of some strangers I hoped we’d gain some momentum and get feedback from people on ways to improve our idea.
Launch
After a couple late nights hacking together a P.O.C, it was time to launch the damned thing.
Getting The Word Out
We knew that in order to get feedback and gauge interest, we needed to get the word out. Neither of us are marketing guys, but I was mindful that our plan had to be easy and simple. We could easily have gone overboard and created a Twitter profile, a Facebook page and bought ads to route traffic to the page, but we didn’t even know what we had yet.
In our Trello board, we had devised a quick punch list called “Marketing Round One.”
Garrett’s the outdoor forum guy. He’d already been lurking in forums to try and find great camping spots. By posting a link to his hangouts, we’d be able to see if camping enthusiasts were interested in our idea.
I’m the Redditor among us. Having hung out on Reddit for a few years, I know that it’s a tricky place. If I post a link, there’s always a mix of helpful and unhelpful comments that follow. Or, no comments at all. Either way, I figured /r/Denver was a good place to start as it’s a large community of active & outdoorsy users. It also isn’t wildly active like many of the default subs, so (I hoped) my post could stick around for a day or two there before getting relegated to obscurity.
Deploy!
I launched our FreeColoradoCamping.com and we posted to our forums. Then we waited. Responses came back very quickly! We we’re stuck to the top spot on /r/Denver for two days! Hundred of comments to sort through. We also got in influx of user feedback from our feedback form on the site.
Next we had to analyze the results:
- How much traffic did we get?
- What feedback was there?
- Was there interest in our idea?
- What improvements can be made?
Up Next…
In part 2 of On The Side we will discuss the design decisions made and the successes and failures of our proof of concept launch. We devise an MVP feature set, and discuss how to make decisions based on user feedback.
