Technical Founders: Learn How to Validate Customers
“Would you be interested in testing out my project?” Alyssa asked. Attending the reception after the Hub’s Angel Squared Investment conference, Alyssa networked among …
“Would you be interested in testing out my project?” Alyssa asked.
Attending the reception after the Hub’s Angel Squared Investment conference, Alyssa networked among the many other entrepreneurs and investors in attendance.
Alyssa had one objective in mind as she was there: to get as many customer interviews scheduled as possible.
Alyssa, who was one of the Github scholarship winner’s for Femgineer’s Lean Product Development course, is the founder of Hipcamp, a tool to discover and reserve campsites.
With only a prototype hand, Alyssa was scared of what other people would think.
Yet, she forced herself to show her website to potential users before she felt ready, because It was one of the homework assignments in Femgineer’s Lean Product Development course. The objective of the assignment was to make sure you are building a product that people want!
[quote author=”Alyssa Ravasio”]If you’re not talking to your customers and validating your product along the way, you risk building something no one wants to use.[/quote]
Her initial set of interviews revealed some unexpected findings.
Initially, Alyssa built the prototype around the assumption that people would not know which state parks were around them. To help them through the process, she wrote code that would make the user choose the city that they live in, and then displayed all nearby state parks.
But she was wrong…
What surprised her was that most interviewees already had an idea of a specific park inside their heads, they knew where they wanted to camp.
She was also surprised that her interviewees didn’t request a huge number of features. They found the prototype she’d already built useful.
Excited by her findings, Alyssa went back to the drawing board to revamp the site based on the feedback from the customer interviews.
A few weeks later she finished an improved user interface, which included a search by campsite.
Although she had already done several interviews which proved her assumptions wrong about search by city, Alyssa knew that it was now time to test her site again with a more specific segment of her early adopters: power campers, people who camp more than ten times a year.
Alyssa had learned in Femgineer’s Lean Product Development course about validating through different market segments, but instead of grouping people by demographics or age she was taught by Poornima to group people by behavior through “Behavior Based Market Segmentation”.
This new segment of her early adopters, power campers, would come from people she met outdoors and camping enthusiasts referred by friends.
Talking and listening to the responses from her fellow hikers and campers, and going back to make the necessary changes on the site, she was now ready to push her beta version of Hipcamp to her friends, family, and people who have signed up for email updates through the landing page.
[quote author=”Alyssa Ravasio”]Going through a lot of these usability interviews I’ve learned to ask open-ended questions instead of specific ones. For example, I would ask – what is your biggest challenge when camping? I’ve received so much unexpected feedback on that one question.[/quote]
At present, Hipcamp has just been launched and is quickly growing.
[quote author=”Alyssa Ravasio”]I will never forget my first customer. It was such an energizing feeling, to know that Hipcamp is why she’ll be spending next weekend on Fremont Peak. Getting people outside, and reminding them that they’re natives on this planet – that’s what I want to do.[/quote]
She is hoping to be in a few states by the end of the summer, many on the West Coast such as Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and Arizona, but she’ll prioritize by wherever she receives the most interest from potential customers.
Her inspiration for expanding Hipcamp based on user demand is inspired by the smart growth model of Facebook.
With all the bare essential features on the site, Alyssa’s goal is to build a better data set, and to make the site more interactive so that people can start contributing, reviewing, and uploading photos and videos.
Alyssa accredits many hours of saved time in coding to the lessons she had learned in the Femgineer’s Lean Product Development course.
[quote author=”Alyssa Ravasio”]If you are a engineering founder you need to be learning the these things. It’s a great crash course on the non-optional basics of how to build a product that people will love.[/quote]
