Discover, Validate, Repeat

Customer Discovery & Validation

I missed my what-has-now-become a monthly update, but I have a few posts lined up for this month to make up for it. Last time, I shared the exciting news of winning an award for “Best Product Design Process & Most Forward Thinking” at a Software Innovation Challenge, hosted by a Family Farm Association (www.caff.org). This achievement opened doors to an incredible opportunity: showcasing my work at a Small Farm Tech Expo at the start of this month, organized by the same association.

The recognition itself was an honor, but the real prize was the chance to spread the word about our startup and engage directly with numerous potential customers, all gathered in one place. I'm deeply grateful to the organizers for facilitating a platform to connect between growers and technology providers.

In this post, I'll delve into the goals I had set for myself leading into the expo, reflect on what aspects went according to plan, identify those that didn't, and share the key insights I gained from the entire experience.

Goals

Sell Less, Listen More: Our goal was to showcase our solution with visual aids, aiming to collect feedback on its effectiveness and identify missing elements. The focus wasn't on selling but on validating if our solution resonates with a broad customer base.

What Now, What Else: Our aim was to assess interest in our features to prioritize for version 1, while remaining open to discovering unrelated customer problems. We really wanted to use the opportunity to learn what else is keeping them up at night or where they are spending most of their time and money.

A few other pointers:

• Customer discovery and validation is an iterative process and for someone like me who is a newcomer to this space, it is all the more important to spend as much time as possible talking to anyone who’d be willing to talk :)

• “The Mom Test” is a great book to understand how to do an unbiased customer research.

• In this iterative process, the goal of a MVP or prototype is not to demo anything or build a full fledged solution. The idea of a MVP, to paraphrase Eric Ries, is to do the least amount of work that can provide the maximum amount of validated learning.

What didn’t go well

• Well, it was a rainy day and the booths were outdoors. The organizers did everything they could to provide us proper cover, but the weather wasn’t too kind. It had an impact on the overall attendance and the booth footfall. I didn’t get to have as many conversations as I could have had if it wasn’t raining.

• We had prepared a survey with a few questions for the farmers to answer, but we couldn’t get even a single form filled out. It wasn’t because of their lack of willingness, doing it amid the busyness and chaos of a booth wasn’t practical. It hindered the natural flow of conversation. Every interaction is an opportunity to build a relationship and filling out surveys felt very transactional. But, creating the questionnaire was beneficial as it provided us with a structured set of questions, ensuring our discussions were focused.

What went/is going well

• Despite the lower than what-I-expected-attendance, we had interesting conversations with a few farmers and associations. We got feedback on what was important, some feature requests and some new ideas.

  

• We had a few farms sign up to join our pilot program!

• We also have a couple of associations interested in having their member farms become part of our pilot. The support of associations and grower hubs is key for us to grow.

• My initial focus was building something for organic farms growing specialty crops and orchards. But recently we have gotten inbound interest from a vineyard, a wheat/corn grower and even a beekeeper! Farming is a unique space, because every farm has its own unique needs based on what they grow, where they are and how big their operation is. So, the fact that what we are building is getting interest from a wider range of farms is encouraging and gives some confidence on how it can scale well.

Next Steps

As I mentioned earlier, a few farms and an association are lined up to pilot our solution. We're planning to work closely with them, fine-tuning our product together in a step-by-step process. Building for farms has its hurdles (connectivity, for starters), but the engineer in me is practically giddy with anticipation for the challenges ahead!

P.S: I realize I've been a bit mysterious about exactly what I'm cooking up. It's not that I'm trying to keep it under wraps on purpose—the product is just still in the oven, getting its flavor. If you're hanging on the edge of your seat, itching to know more, don't be shy! Drop me a line, and I'll gladly dive into every painstakingly delicious detail with you.

Gratitude

If you paid close attention, I have used a collective pronoun (”We”) through out this post. A couple of friends are volunteering their time to help me out and I want to thank them from the bottom of my heart (you know who you are!).

I wanted to conclude this post with a personal pic. Regardless of the amount of space available, my son and dog always seem to have a knack for choosing a spot rightttt next to me. It's moments like these, so full of affection, that I've come to cherish deeply, wanting to capture and hold onto them. It has highlighted for me the significance of appreciating these fleeting joys as they occur.