read more
Highlights from the week prior:
• Any big wins, things you feel good about, key learnings, etc?
◦ From customer discovery:
▪ Students likely won’t be willing to pay for our text when class has available seat feature; they think their parents will, though.
▪ Students across the board said they would share the notify feature with their friends
◦ Brad Holliday from GrowthX seems interested; asked for our pitch deck and mentioned a call/visit to Nashville
◦ 2nd place StartQ pitch competition
◦ Tara finished finals!
◦ Our key marketing time for incoming first-years looks like it’s starting rather early for some schools (end of May), so we may need to relegate a lot more time to development/testing.
Goals:
• What did you set out to accomplish this last week? Were those goals met?
◦ Schedule at least 25 interviews (scheduled 14)
◦ Complete at least 15 interviews (completed 8)
◦ Run demand indicator script on 30 additional schools (decided not pressing)
◦ Close deal with Elon University (still pending on lawyer)
◦ Document registration dates for incoming freshman at 40 schools (documented 50)
◦ High level, good or bad things that happened this week.
▪ Got a decent number of interviews done considering only Joe was available to do them; our goals didn’t take into account being at Start-Q for two days.
• What are your key deliverables and action items for the week ahead?
◦ Complete 15 customer interviews
◦ Get Tara caught up to speed
◦ Finalize email pitch deck for Brad
◦ Create master calendar of summer registration timing across supported schools
◦ Begin to decide what will/can be delegated to intern
◦ Complete 83(b) Election Documents
◦ Get our EIN number setup
◦ Get our banking setup and money wired
• What have you set as your goals for Demo Day?
◦ Notification service running (and further scalable), at 50 schools.
◦ >=10,000 users of notification service from new schools.
◦ Schedule maker service running at over 200 schools.
◦ Have tested effectiveness of Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, and campus reps/in-person ads.
◦ Profit positive (>=$1000 of profit from summer)
Customer Discovery:
• # of customers on your lead list
◦ 524 (cold emails sent to this many people)
• # of customers discovery interviews completed
◦ 8
• # of customer discovery interviews scheduled
◦ ~10
◦ Other things to briefly note:
▪ What system are you using to document your lead lists, questions, discovery findings? Provide a link or attachment if relevant.
▪ Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qfpVmWcVwTMnFYycJXBZPNM2HVqqptpa67XkK45D7Oc/edit#gid=0
▪ What key things has customer discovery revealed about your assumptions?
▪ Stated above
▪ Have any areas in your BMC changed based on those learnings?
▪ Customers likely won’t be students, but their parents/people who want to advertise to college students
Business Development:
• About to close deal with Elon University
• Brad Holliday interested in potential call / visit in Nashville
Finances:
• Money left in the bank = $21,980
• Monthly burn. = $1020
• Runway / Zero Dollar Day: 5/16/17
Questions + Help:
• Worried about missing the ideal marketing time to incoming freshman if we don’t start development/testing immediately.
• If we do a small friends and family round to fund marketing efforts now, what does that mean for our existing SAFEs? Is there a trigger for conversion to equity as soon as any new money is raised?
Week 1
Goals / Progress:
• What did you set out to accomplish this last week? Were those goals met?
◦ Finish reading through all incorporation documents, get questions answered, sign
◦ Complete full set of interview questions
◦ Gather 100 customers on lead lists
◦ Revamp pitch deck after getting destroyed by Mara
◦ Completed all but the lead list goal
• What are your key deliverables and action items for the week ahead?
◦ Schedule at least 25 interviews
◦ Complete at least 15 interviews
◦ Run demand indicator script on 30 additional schools
◦ Close deal with Elon University
◦ Document registration dates for incoming freshman at 40 schools
• What have you set as your goals for Demo Day?
◦ Still have to go over these with my co-founder
◦ Notification service running (and further scalable), at 100 schools.
◦ >=10,000 users of notification service from new schools.
◦ Schedule maker service running at over 200 schools.
◦ Experiment with Google Adwords and Facebook Ads to determine viability.
◦ Revenue positive (>=$1000 of revenue from summer)
KPI's / Customer Discovery:
• # of customers on your lead list
◦ 60
• # of customers discovery interviews completed
◦ ~0, but I did ask some questions at mixers
• # of customer discovery interviews scheduled
◦ ~0
• What key things has customer discovery revealed about your assumptions
◦ I have asked some of my problem questions to recent-grads I’ve met at the mixers, and I’ve learned that even the smaller institutions (3-4 thousand undergrads) experience difficulties getting into courses. Which invalidates one of our assumptions about customer segment.
◦ Learned that greek life might be a good distribution channel
• What other metrics have you determined as your KPI’s for measuring business performance?
◦ % weekly user growth
◦ % weekly growth of new site visitors
◦ # of schools added to service(s)
◦ % weekly revenue growth
Questions / Help (optional):
• where do you need support and/or have questions?
◦ Would really appreciate if you all could give me contact info for students you know in college + contact info of parents of students who are in college.
• any challenges you are facing?
Mara’s feedback:
Should include KPI regarding user returning other than just during registration (to show that we’re monetizable) / KPI’s that show we’re able to monetize.
For everyone in future: Conversion rate from lead lists. Data, metrics, benchmarks.
Ashley has contact info she can give for college students/parents.
Week 2
Goals / Progress:
• What did you set out to accomplish this last week? Were those goals met?
◦ Schedule at least 25 interviews (scheduled 14)
◦ Complete at least 15 interviews (completed 8)
◦ Run demand indicator script on 30 additional schools (decided not pressing; didn’t do)
◦ Close deal with Elon University (got word Sunday night that we could proceed; should close today or tomorrow)
◦ Document registration dates for incoming freshman at 40 schools (documented >50)
• What are your key deliverables and action items for the week ahead?
◦ Complete 15 customer interviews
◦ Get Tara caught up to speed
◦ Create master calendar of summer registration timing across supported schools + develop/test as necessary
◦ Complete 83(b) Election Documents
◦ Get our EIN number setup
◦ Get our banking setup and money wired
• What have you set as your goals for Demo Day?
◦ Notification service running (and further scalable), at 50 schools.
◦ >=10,000 users of notification service from new schools.
◦ Schedule maker service running at over 200 schools.
◦ Have tested effectiveness of Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, and campus reps/in-person ads.
◦ Profit positive (>=$1000 of profit from summer)
KPI's / Customer Discovery:
• # of customers on your lead list
◦ 524
• # of customers discovery interviews completed
◦ 8 (although 2 via email)
• # of customer discovery interviews scheduled
◦ 10 in the pipeline (scheduling)
• What key things has customer discovery revealed about your assumptions
◦ Students very likely won’t pay upfront, but they’re pretty certain their parents would pay.
◦ Every person interviewed said they would tell their friends about the notify service. A moderate fraction would share on Facebook/Twitter (probably about the expected amount).
• What other metrics have you determined as your KPI’s for measuring business performance?
◦ Avg. session duration on site for non-peak times
◦ % weekly revenue growth
◦ % weekly user growth
◦ % weekly growth of new site visitors
◦ # of schools added to service(s)
Questions / Help (optional):
• where do you need support and/or have questions?
• any challenges you are facing?
Week 3
Goals / Progress:
• What did you set out to accomplish this last week? Were those goals met?
◦ Complete 15 customer interviews (completed 14).
◦ Create master schedule of when registration started for our supported schools + develop/test as necessary (looked up all 100 school’s registration dates and spent a couple days writing our first unit tests for most crucial code coverage)
◦ Complete 83(b) Election Documents (completed, mailing in)
◦ Get our EIN number setup (EIN setup)
◦ Get our banking setup and money wired (still need to do)
• What are your key deliverables and action items for the week ahead?
◦ Get our banking setup and money wired
◦ Parallelizing large number of HTTP requests (likely using an existing package)
◦ Launch new notification service at a single school to test under production conditions.
◦ Second meeting with BBA solutions (who are interested in a partnership)
◦ Put together marketing strategy for rolling out our notification service at the new schools
▪ Specifically the content posting on Facebook
▪ Joining GroupMe’s (commonly in use by freshman classes organized by orientation group, which is great).
• What have you set as your goals for Demo Day?
◦ [no major changes]
◦ Notification service running (and further scalable), at 50 schools.
◦ >=10,000 users of notification service from new schools.
◦ Schedule maker service running at over 200 schools.
◦ Have tested effectiveness of Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, and campus reps/in-person ads.
◦ Profit positive (>=$1000 of profit from summer)
KPI's / Customer Discovery:
• # of customers on your lead list
◦ 745
• # of customers discovery interviews completed
◦ 23
• # of customer discovery interviews scheduled
◦ 0
• What key things has customer discovery revealed about your assumptions
◦ We’ve verified key features about our product with the first 10, we refocused the next 10 solely on monetization, and provincially discovered that textbook price comparisons and ads for full and part-time jobs and off-campus housing are of huge interest
• What other metrics have you determined as your KPI’s for measuring business performance?
◦ [added] Possibly CTR and conversion of textbook price links (on Amazon, Chegg, Abebooks)
◦ [added] Possibly CTR on jobs/internship ads on site.
◦ Avg. session duration on site for non-peak times
◦ % weekly revenue growth
◦ % weekly user growth
◦ % weekly growth of new site visitors
◦ # of schools added to service(s)
Questions / Help (optional):
• [none] unless someone has experience parallelizing a large number of requests.
Mara’s feedback:
• Need to do customer interviews on parents for next week.
Week 4
Highlights from the week prior:
Goals:
• What did you set out to accomplish this last week? Were those goals met?
◦ Parallelizing large number of HTTP requests (done!)
◦ [did a few things that were unplanned]
▪ Created basic functioning job advertisement pulling from the Indeed API.
▪ Setup git on the server so we now have an actually modern way of developing.
◦ Get our banking setup and money wired (talked to B of A for an hour; waiting to hear back from SVB, will probably go with B of A)
◦ Launch new notification service at a single school to test under production conditions (will be doing this week)
◦ Second meeting with BBA solutions (meeting Tuesday or Wednesday evening for dinner)
◦ Put together marketing strategy for rolling out our notification service at the new schools (moved to this week)
▪ Specifically the content posting on Facebook
▪ Joining GroupMe’s (commonly in use by freshman classes organized by orientation group, which is great).
• What are your key deliverables and action items for the week ahead?
◦ Finalize bank setup
◦ Test notifications to Sprint (had some users complain they weren’t getting texts to their Sprint phones)
◦ Talk to Boston edtech startup that reached out (Cram Fighter)
◦ Launch and market notification service at single school to test some of our go-to-market hypotheses
Product Update:
• After the development done this weekend, the notify service is ready and safe to launch at new schools.
Customer Discovery:
• # of customers on your lead list
◦ 745
• # of customers discovery interviews completed
◦ 23
Finances:
• Money left in the bank = $21,980
• Monthly burn. = $1020
• Runway / Zero Dollar Day: 5/16/17