Captain’s Log: Week 10
Our tenth week’s reflection of the DivInc Social Justice Innovation accelerator.
Recap
Our ninth week of the accelerator was all about clarity. We focused on clearly articulating our understanding of what we’ve learned, our solution, its value propositions, and the pitch that binds it all (which you can see on our new landing page). During our tenth week, we focused on practicing, refining, and finalizing our pitch.
Pitch prep. We pitched to other founders and investors, all completely unfamiliar with our idea — including one session where it was only script only. The feedback was rather consistent: they were unsure about what our product is. Because we’re so early in our development and consistently questioned on how we differ from incumbents, we’ve leaned into using them (e.g. Quora, GitHub, LinkedIn) while describing what we do.
User interviews. In a first this week, a user said, unprompted, that not only that he would use Pearl, but that he “would pay for it” during a usability test. That a-ha moment signals that something’s working. Our new goal is to unpack what specifically resonated so that we, in the words of one of our mentors, can “convert one, then do it again.”
Our biggest learnings from the tenth week are:
Language matters (for real, a whole lot). When making something that doesn’t exist, words are one of the cheapest tools in communicating a vision. The exercise of explaining an idea without visuals is painful, and we felt it. However, this is the nature of the beast, as we won’t always have the luxury of visuals to support our narrative. Further, it pushed us to refine our narrative and make it more authentic.
What’s next
On Thursday, April 21, we’ll have five minutes to explain the problem we’re solving, Pearl, and why the world needs it now.
Register to see our pitch live or on a live stream here. We hope you’ll join us.
If you’re looking to create, find, and share solutions for human challenges at work with a community, let’s talk.
You can follow our accelerator journey here on Medium or our social media accounts.
Lawrence Humphrey, Co-founder and CEO of Pearl
Fallon Blossom, Co-founder and COO of Pearl
