Growing & Getting Ready - Interviewing, Testing and Tweaking

by Jin Hwang
March 1, 2012

Who am I and what am I doing here?  I am the Co-founder and CEO of EveningFlow. We solve the discovery process.  EveningFlow empowers bars and restaurants to post essential information and real-time updates, driving traffic and venue awareness.  We give venues a voice to share their experience inside and users access to all of the usable information needed to pick a place to go.

I <3 you, Chicago

Being a lean, bootstrapped startup keeps you busy!  So many hats to wear, so few hours in the day.  In the past 6 months, it's been a great learning experience.  Talking with more potential customers for feedback, testing the UX, parsing out the need to haves and nice to haves, focusing our strategy, keeping the team fueled...  It's been an amazing beginning to our startup journey.  I'm dealing with a double-sided network, so life is harder than others.  Thankfully, the EF Team rocks.  Here's part of what we've learned while building and honing EveningFlow:

Interviewing Customers for Needs

Pounding the pavement and tapping the friend network here in Chicago is an interesting and rewarding ride.  If you're an entrepreneur, you should be able to have a conversation with anyone about your business.  You have to be able to explain to people why your idea is solving a problem and today's archaic methods aren't cutting it. The toughest thing about walking door-to-door isn't the awkwardness. It is the fact that you are ANOTHER entrepreneur who has a solution to help a very busy business owner.  It's like tech fatigue for certain industries.

What did I learn from talking to the great folks who graciously awarded me 5 minutes of their time for my bravery?  You have to LISTEN and MEMORIZE about what they care about.  Take notes and show them that every word they speak is gold.  Everyone talks about identifying the pain points.  What I learned is that you have to understand a customer's business in and out to grasp why those pain points occur.  That's where domain expertise is a huge asset.  I get it.  If you don't have it, be a sponge and talk with everyone in the industry.  Live in their shoes. 

For EveningFlow, we listened and focused on how we can better connect bars and restaurants with the engaged masses. Here's what we learned about the industries:

  1. They don't need you on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. So what can you offer on the slow days/nights?
  2. Make your product/service STUPID SIMPLE to use.  There are too many moving parts for them to manage as it is.  Make their work easier, not more complicated.
  3. Be GREAT at SELLING.  Business owners have seen your kind for years.  It takes them 5 seconds to smell bullshit.  Make your service valuable.  If it's a simple tool, make it cheap. If it's game-changing, have people see the value for themselves and then price it...but don't gouge.  Use reason.
  4. They want people streaming in the door.  How does your app make that magic happen?  Don't tell them, show them.  Data data data...track it, measure it. Repeat.

Demo and Testing for Feedback

VISUAL ROCKS!!  Get your demo (or MVP for you folks who love jargon) up ASAP.  There are no proven statistics on visual vs auditory learning.  However, if you can SHOW how your app works, the light bulbs will go off faster and you will get extremely helpful feedback.  People can point with their finger what works and what doesn't.  You will see how users and/or customers use it and tailor your UX.  But that's nothing new..that's all MVP / Lean Startup Methodology.  You know how they say "the proof is in the pudding"? That's great pudding. Whip it up...NOW.

When I first started my customer and user interviews, I had to get my pitch down.  It's still evolving today but it's so great to show people the demo.

Users - They might try to poke holes in your idea, but for the most part, they will smell what you're cooking. If you create something cool, fast, fun, simple AND well designed, they will support you.  Your problem isn't getting the people you talk with face to face to want to use your service.  It's the masses that you have to worry about.  How do you get the millions of strangers out there to try out your product?  I've been learning a lot about SEO, Social Media, and viral marketing.  (Thank you to the wonderful experts / startup founders who have generously given me their time to share their knowledge with me.)  Still need more help though!

Customers / Business Owners - Tough crowd but understandably so.  In some ways, they respond like an investor.  Ask them for advice and they might give you money (to be a customer) or share valuable insights.  Ask them for money and they might tell you to get lost.  Don't "sell" to them.  BUILD A RELATIONSHIP!  If you can somehow manage to get them to sit down with you, listen to your idea, listen to your story, and answer all of your questions, thank them profusely. Simple.

Tweaking for Better

I talked with EVERYONE about my idea and what we're building.  No NDA, no hesitancy.  From ALL of the feedback you received from the gaggles of people with whom you spoke, there should be a pile of insightful gems and knowledge bombs that you did not think of.  That's the power of CROWDSOURCING.  It saves us time and money through apps and services today.  It will help you with your idea.

With our pile of knowledge bombs, we were able to hone in on what we think are the right package of features...and developed a focused (yet malleable) strategy on how we're going to keep making money. 

Now, we hope that our hard work gets a healthy dose of luck and support. 

Please sign up for our beta:

www.eveningflow.com

(It's just a splash page now but we're oh so close to launching our beta)

Also, please follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/eveningflow

And "like" us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/EveningFlow/235497616471262

You won't regret it!!!

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