My Journey – Customer Discovery to Minimum Viable Problem
first printed on Lean Startup Circle Blog by Michael Domanski
Hi, my name is Michael Domanski and I was born into a family of entrepreneurs in Poland. For a long time my father ran his company production from our garage. My mother used to run a shoe shop and then her own shoe sewing services company.
Having such a background, I tried finding my own way and ended up at Warsaw Tech University studying computer science and electronic engineering. While the subjects I studied were more or less interesting, the dorm life had a serious impact on my career, since I ended up living with people connected to the growing tissue of startup companies in Warsaw.
After the first year I started looking for a job and got myself hired in a startup. And that was an eye opener. Fast forward to April 2012, I still haven’t worked in a company that isn’t a startup. And I slowly realized that I had ideas for a tool that could be used by companies facing product management problems.
The beginning
In April 2012 I worked in a startup where the phrase “lean startup” was used so heavily people rolled their eyes when they heard it again. At the time I had no idea what they were actually talking about. And it turned out, nobody had. CEO pitched it heavily, but no one really took time to read any of the books.
I was driven to find out what “lean startup” was really about. And right away the whole idea seemed familiar. I was always interested in designing user experience, had some knowledge about the engineers approach of solving problems and used to work during summers in shoe shops – so I had some hands on experience about finding out what people need.
The idea
At the university and at work every day I looked at the problem of real life work scheduling, since engineers working at startups usually lack management skills. In particular, people were miscalculating deadlines, not considering task dependencies–is my work critical for someone else–or who was best suited for a particular job or task.
What I realized was that problems such as:
- Task dependencies
- Task duration (how much this should take?)
- Task assignment (who is best fitting to do this?)
can be solved by analyzing historical data, trends and simple human errors stored in the project management software. Like a static analyzer but for a project plan.
Since I was heavily into iOS app development at the time, my original idea was a mobile app. Having skepticism in my DNA I asked my friend, who at the time had successfully launched a really lean startup in the area. We talked for a while: people don’t plan a month using an iPhone. A pivot was needed.
The pivots
I was back to the formula, trying to find a way for this to work. I knew already that this has to run on a desktop, so I settled on a web app. Then I started to think about a basic set of features and came with this:
- A web app, with monthly subscription
- Task owner suggestion, based on skill, previous records and current workload assessment
- Visualizing who does the task and to what time frame it all adds up
Next I made a launch page with some statements what I intend to do, submitted that to betali.st and waited for email responses. I recieved a few that led to productive customer problem interviews and others that suggested ways I could improve my landing page.
The first few days on betali.st earned me a few hundred emails, as it turns out people love productivity software. I later turned this list of emails into mailing list and asked people if they wanted to help me with a short interview. Less than 60 actually opened the email, around 10 agreed.
The good part is that I had some good hits: people in crisis management, startups, and people in small companies working all over the world. Here is what I learned:
- People already have well tested solutions
- They mix a lot of real life objects like paper and whiteboards where software is lacking
- They are less than interested in using my untested platform
- They have a lot of data in their current tool, be it Basecamp or AtTask and they don’t want to move
I also sent emails to various people listed on http://leanstartup.pbworks.com/LSC-People-Willing-to-Help-with-Pitches asking them for feedback on my idea. A few responded, including Hiten Shah and Sean Murphy, who became an advisor on this trip. Bottom line here is: keep trying, patience breaks through walls.
Current map of problem
The problem space various people face when working with task/project management tools is so vast that trying to be better just by fixing all of them was a bad idea. More research on work management solutions led me to realize that there were more than 80 with APIs, but they differed only in details. To deliver value I didn’t need to develop the whole task management system. I could integrate with the API, and most of the big players in the field of work management have public API.
So the characteristics of my potential customer looked so:
- A small company, staff somewhere between 10 and 50 (we like smaller companies)
- Company doing creative or knowledge work – like a startup, software house or creative agency
- Uses tools like Basecamp, Zoho, or AtTask as work management tool (or other similar systems with an API we could leverage)
- Many to many work scheme (many people working on many projects)
- Projects require more than one person, typically with different skills
- One person works on several projects at the same time
- Projects / design projects requiring specialized expertise or knowledge
Now I needed to find contacts that actually fit this profile. Again, I turned to my mailing list but that gave 0 result. Then I’ve spotted one interesting pattern. I was reading through 37signals blog and they’ve mentioned people blogging on their own pages how they use tools made by 37signals to improve their work.
So I’ve turned to Google and started combing the network for people blogging about how they use Basecamp. After a few hours I’ve sent less than 30 carefully aimed emails and went back to trying to write a decent blogpost.
Surprisingly the cold email tactic worked and I did got some very high quality interviews. The interesting part is that those who responded were the biggest players in that batch, with the most sophisticated setups and turning serious profit.
Where are we now?
We are working on Minimal Viable Problem: serious enough to get paid for solving it but small enough to:
- Deliver MVP (Minimal Viable Product)
- Measure the effects
- Iterate with it or toss it out in a short period of time.
The problem space is quite large and to remain sane we did have to pick one vector of approach.
We have a website for the project up at teamwork.mdomans.com with a blog and a twitter feed @getteamwork
Sean Murphy‘s perspective
I find the small team collaboration environment to be an exciting space. It’s one that I have worked personally on and with a number of companies. One of the things that was most interesting about my early conversations with Michal was that we were both wrestling with how to describe–and support–teams that were “in flow. They were able to stay on the same page about a problem but work on a number of distinct issues in parallel to create a harmony that was greater than the sum of the individual team members actions.
Our first interaction was working through my “The First Seven Questions Any Product Plan Should Answer.” We walked throught the answers three times, refining them and shifting the focus to what we could build on top of existing popular project management tools instead of replacing them. In the first month we looked for what was missing that we could add to complement.
We also reviewed a number of different experiences each of us had working on teams, good and bad, and felt that there was considerable value in supporting flow at a team level. We challenged ourselves to focus on what could we offer to help a small team that wanted to move fast on creative or complex problems. We briefly considered “crisis management” as a focus and then narrowed it to creative teams. Crisis teams may make for a great Act 2.
Next steps
We continue to look for small teams using Basecamp, Zoho, or AtTask as work management tool. Often they are using many other tools in addition (e.g. Google Docs, Dropbox, GitHub, Skype, GotoMeeting, etc..). If you are interested in working with us or open to an interview on how you manage their workflow, we are very interested in your experiences, perspective, and any insights that you would be willing to share. We promise to be respectful of your time and offer early access to our case study in return. Please use the contact form at http://teamwork.mdomans.com/contact/