We totally screwed that up…
But wait, it’s ok! Cause that’s what MVPs and betas are for right? Damn right. And thanks to your feedback we learned a ton. We listened intently to your crazy ideas, warranted frustrations and inspiring aspirations. We empathized with your challenges and innovated to solve them.
Good thing there’s nothing we love more than a good challenge. And after all, the best way to learn is through experience. And we’re all about experience. So now we’re back, smarter and stronger. Here’s a quick run down of some of key breakthroughs we made from our screw ups:
DEMAND VS SUPPLY
PROBLEM: We initially attempted the traditional marketplace model — create any experience and we’ll see if anyone cares. This wasn’t the greatest strategy ever because you either had no clue what kind of experience to create and/or didn’t find what you were hoping for.
SOLUTION: Build a reverse marketplace. We decided to make this fun by building a bucket list tool that would inspire you with 99 different experiences that you can add to your bucket list and then share and compare with friends. And once we know what you want, we make it our mission to backfill supply to bring you these experience.
EXPERIENCE TEMPLATES
PROBLEM: You weren’t sure what type of experience to create or how to describe it.
SOLUTION: We created 99 pre-made experience templates for you so you can simply select what activities you can offer, add them to your coach list and bam — you’re a micro-entrepreneur!
STANDARDIZED PRICING
PROBLEM: You didn’t know how to price your experience. What are you worth? What would people pay?
SOLUTION: We crunched some numbers and saw something interesting — the vast majority of experiences created in our beta broke down to about $25/person/hour. So we thought, why not make things easy for you, for us, for everyone… and trial standardized pricing at $25/person/hour.
CHAT VS SCHEDULING
PROBLEM: We initially launched with a scheduling tool that allowed you to set your availability. There was a major flaw with this approach: you didn’t really know for sure when you’d be free. This was not helpful to you. So you would ask me to introduce you to the lead on Messenger, and you would just chat and figure out a time. Scheduling sucked. Chatting was much better.
SOLUTION: Scrap the scheduler. Start building chat.
The bucket list tool and experience templates are now ready for you — so go get inspired and signup so we can make your bucket list our to do list. The chat booking and standardized pricing are coming next — so stay tuned! Plus, there are even more key learnings that I won’t get into quite yet; save some surprises for later.
So in fact it’s not just ok that we screwed up; it’s a crucial part of the process. I believe the proper startup jargon is ‘iteration’. So we shipped early, shit hit the fan, we soaked it up — sucked it up — and pivoted gracefully.
Can’t wait to see what we’ll screw up next…
