My Experience Completing One Build-Measure-Learn Loop with Liberty Ventures
Introduction
My name is Jesse Robbins, and I’m the co-founder of Be My Local (bemylocal.net). In this post, I’m going to share with you what I learned from my experience of talking to customers first before doing any sort of product development.
Naturally, talking to customers first before developing our solution sounds intuitive. However, as a budding entrepreneur, I know first hand the desire to create a solution that we think can change the world without giving one iota of thought as to whether people actually want what we’re providing. Prior to committing to doing these interviews, I had already been caught up in the allure of “build it, and they will come,” due largely in part to all of the stories I’ve read about successful entrepreneurs who struck it rich off of their idea.
How I found this challenge
This particular task of talking to customers and summarizing my learnings originates from a challenge that John Sechrest, founder of Seattle Angel Conference and startup mentor, issued on his blog, One Order of Magnitude At A Time.
On December 7, 2016, John posted an article entitled “Startup Day Offer — One Build Measure Learn Loop with Liberty Ventures.” In this article, he issued to would-be entrepreneurs the challenge of completing one Build-Measure-Learn loop (see: “Lean Startup” by Eric Reis). This would involve interviewing five customers, submitting to an online form what I learned from the conversations, and writing a blog post (the one you’re reading right now) of my own describing what I learned from the entire process.
To say that I’m glad that I took this challenge would be a severe understatement. The entire week-long experience of finding interviewees, recording my conversations with them, and digesting their insights in separate reports has already yielded plenty of benefits.
Three benefits of taking this challenge
1. This challenge has forced me to think critically about how I’d actually go about identifying and finding my target market well before spending an expensive minute on coding. Finding customers was naturally much more difficult than I expected, which was better to learn sooner than later. Through my UW Foster MBA alumni network, I was able to find nine people willing to have coffee with me to discuss their travel preferences.
2. This challenge forced me to create a simple hypothesis that I could test quickly, cheaply, and efficiently. The interviews I conducted allowed me to prove and disprove various parts of my hypothesis, all without even having to tell the interviewees about what I was actually creating. Their insights were, in a way, telling me what I should create. While our initial invention hasn’t changed too much from its inception, there are certainly features of our solution that we’re going to eliminate after learning that they’re actually not important to customers. This learning is going to save us a lot of development time.
3. The interviewees have given my team objective data by which we can use to make smarter decisions on how best to progress and ultimately develop. If we didn’t have this objective data, then I’m willing to bet that our team would’ve spent plenty of time arguing about what direction to go and which features to include and how to prioritize them, all the while wasting precious time, energy, and inertia.
Understanding my interviewees through the context of the problem I want to solve
All five people I interviewed were savvy, experienced, and adventurous travelers who disliked traditional guided tours and being led around like sheep, but who also weren’t keen on getting lost. These travelers have had the experience of traveling to a country where they’ve had a local friend who was able to show them places (e.g. bars, restaurants, clubs, outdoor musical performances) that the travelers themselves admit they would’ve never found on their own.
Comparing trips when they didn’t have a local to ones when they did, all five stated that the time with the local made for a more memorable experience, and that having a local increased the value of the trip and experience itself. These locals were able to remove the cognitive weight of traveling in a country where English wasn’t the primary language, which would increase the difficulties of transportation, transaction, and general exploration off the beaten path.
The single most interesting insight across all five interviewees
Language barriers weren’t a key concern when traveling to Japan and Vietnam. Granted these travelers realize that there is an inherent risk of getting lost because they can’t communicate verbally or in reading and writing, they chalk this up to the adventure of travel, and they know that they can rely on technology to get themselves out of a jam. This insight disproved a part of our hypothesis — that some people worry heavily about the language barrier when traveling to Japan and Vietnam — and now forces us to rethink how we’re going to create and communicate value for the customer. Yes, it’s a concern, but it’s not a large enough concern to prohibit a trip to either of these countries.
The single most important insight across all five interviewees
Observing how each of the travelers’ eyes lit up and how their voices heightened in excitement when they recounted the times they spent with their local friends was a very important moment in each of the interviews. This reflexive response signaled to me that the time spent with the local continues to hold an important place in their heart, thus confirming our original hypothesis that travelers do see value in connecting with a local who can help them maximize the enjoyment they get in visiting their city.
The single most surprising insight across all five interviewees
Sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor, as well as friends and family who have traveled to Japan and Vietnam before these travelers all serve as indirect competition. The travelers I interviewed currently solve their problem by relying on these sources of information. However, they also acknowledge that these sources of information get them only part of the way towards their ideal travel experience. The “personal element” is often missing from these recommendations. Granted the recommendations on where to go and what to eat, see, and do may be sound, those making the recommendation, be they users on the travel sites or friends and family, may not know the traveler personally enough to make a recommendation that the traveler will know for certain that they will like. To this extent, the travelers are still relying on an element of luck when they follow through on a recommendation.
Additional useful insights learned from these five interviewees
A few of the interviewees mentioned that knowing a local is a legitimate variable that they add to their overall calculus of deciding which country and city to go. This compels our team to create another hypothesis for us to test at this early stage in our development: Whether countries that were originally deprioritized or written off completely because the traveler didn’t have a local in town would be reconsidered were they to have the option of connecting with a trusted, vetted local.
What needs to happen in order to get these interviewees to give me money in exchange for our solution
I need to communicate the value that these travelers will receive by deciding to let Be My Local find and match them with a local in Japan and Vietnam. This task includes building trust (and eventually brand) with the traveler by giving the traveler ample time and opportunity to clearly state their travel preferences and interests, and demonstrating that we have a network of locals who can help the travelers realize those preferences and interests in country. Equally as important is that we need to stake our reputation on these locals and the experiences they can provide, making sure that the travelers feel safe and secure spending the time, money, and effort to meet with one of our locals.
What I need to do in order to make this happen
I need to spend as much time as possible in concierge mode, interviewing prospective travelers and making sure that they do a good job of clearly communicating their preferences and interests through our website. Likewise, I need to ensure that the locals are clear in what they want to show the tourists, and clear on what our expectations are for creating an ideal unique, “my story” local travel experience. Once I clearly understand the needs and offerings of both parties, I will then be in a stronger position to convince the traveler to give Be My Local money in exchange for our services.
Summary
This short, one-week exercise has already helped our company realign our product development strategy using customer insights as a bright beacon to follow. I’m relieved that we haven’t spent any time on coding, and instead have allocated more time towards better understanding the needs of our target demographic. Doing this research earlier on in our development will only serve to increase the likelihood that we will create a more successful and viable solution later on.
