FoundersDoor 3.0 — Customer Discovery & Validation

FoundersDoor is a six week pre-accelerator for early stage tech founders from underrepresented backgrounds in London. The programme is delivered by YSYS in partnership with One Tech as part of the Mayor of London’s Digital Talent initiative.

The first couple of weeks of FoundersDoor have been a deep dive into all things customer related. Our cohort started their journeys by taking part in the amazing Founders Weekend, ran by Foundervine. Over the course of the weekend, over 40 individuals formed teams around various innovative ideas and pitched to a panel to win a place on the FoundersDoor programme (and a Macbook…😅)

The successful five teams were able to craft their ideas in a two day sprint in which, given the limited time, a number of business assumptions were made that were yet to be validated. This is where the value of FoundersDoor comes in.

The first two modules of FoundersDoor were led by the amazing, Rumbi Makanga. Rumbi has over 7 years working with early-stage startups to commercialise their ideas and technologies, so were extremely privileged to have her share her expertise in these two areas.

Week 1

Week 1 was all about customer discovery. What is it? Why is it important? How do you perform it?

On FoundersDoor, the cohort receive access to lectures a week prior to their corresponding live webinars. This enables them to digest the core concepts, begin practical homework, and be able to gather key questions that they need feedback or support with from experience rather than abstract theory. For Week 1, this meant consolidating a lot of the work that they had done during Founders Weekend.

The webinar with Rumbi was a bit of a wake-up call for our cohort. One of the key takeaways was the notion that narrowing down on your problem statement as a founder is fundamental to proceeding with your startup. The problem statement is the foundation for all the activities that follow, specifically, communicating your value proposition and eventually even developing a prototype, MVP or final product.

Rumbi asked teams a number of questions to force them to address this head on. What became clear was that they all needed to spend time stripping away all of the assumptions that they made during the weekend and looking at their ideas with fresh eyes. This was a painful and even frustrating task for some of the teams due to all the planning that they made based on their assumptions, but by the end they all understood the necessity of this activity.

As a result, all teams ended up either redefining their problem statements, re-assessing who their assumed customer segments are, or drafting a plan on how to access and communicate with them. A mixture of customer surveys, interviews, joining online communities on Facebook and further brainstorming were the actions that came about as a result, which set the tone for some significant learnings and potential pivots to arise.

Week 2

Rumbi stressed in her second lecture on Customer Validation that customer validation is an ongoing process that doesn’t end after one week. Nevertheless, when facilitation our morning standup, I was amazed by the progress that the teams had made in just one week.

Curley Care — put together a survey with an aim of receiving responses from 100 individuals which would allow them to get more customer insights. They managed to surpass this and receive responses from over 200. Their goal is now to do some detailed data analysis to pick up any patterns present.

Grow — had started market research and received 50 respondents to their customer survey, which is still open. Their next steps are to continue gathering and analysing data, start customer interviews and think about what a prototype of their product could look like.

Langamo — joined various Facebook groups with educators to reach out to some for interviews. These conversations suggested that sticking to language comprehension for their users was a better focus than for all aspects of language learning and they decided to open up their target user from refugees to all children to open up their audience.

AdaptED — managed to narrow down their previously highlighted six customer segments, which were a mixture of B2B and B2C customers, into three key ones: parents, private tuition institutions and schools. They even narrowed down their value proposition to the “sequencing” of student learning, but their working on the right wording.

ViewIt — being the only solo-founded start-up on the programme can be hard! We’ve had a couple of these during the last two cohorts who have managed to make good strides despite this. ViewIt are now currently on the lookout for co-founders, alongside building out their customer profiles and thinking about their prototype ahead of next week.

Community Asks — How can you support?

Email me at kwaku@thisisysys.com.

Curley Care are looking to be put in touch with trichologists who have expertise in black hair care.

Plant Owners! Please fill out the quick customer survey for Grow here

Are you interested in the housing market and how technology can make viewings a lot easier? Reach out to connect and potentially join the ViewIt on FoundersDoor.