Bootstrap Hawaii Ep. 2 – The Story so far… What I did wrong, what I did right, and what next

Bootstrap Hawaii

In this episode, I talk about what we did wrong so far with Lesson Underground, what we did right, and most importantly what I’m going to start doing now.

Cutting to the chase, we did a lot wrong, but the root cause of it all boils down to one thing.

Laziness. Specifically due to having money to spend on this project.

In the past, we never had much money so we would be forced to figure out how to do things in the most cost efficient way. Now that UU is doing well, we got really lazy with a bunch of things and kind of threw money at problems which lead to extremely sloppy execution on our end.

Here is just some of the unspeakable and embarrassing things we did / did not do

1. We assumed product / market fit due to the small traction we had with a similar but not exact product within Ukulele Underground.
2. We failed to validate the delivery method of the solution (skype lessons)
3. We failed to validate the pricing of lessons with customers before launch and set expectations with customers properly
4. We failed to test and validate assumptions of user behavior with both teacher and student

Because of all of this we ended up with a solution that really it appears not many people want.

Although we did a lot of things wrong, we did somethings right.

1. We started with a problem in mind and didn’t start with what we could do (didn’t matter in the end though)
2. I built a (albeit small) pre-launch mailing list, so we had users in the door day 1
3. Got a handful of very high calibre teachers to sign up

So What Now?

Nevertheless, dwelling on the past too long is not beneficial at all, so now lets focus on what I’m working on this week.

Basically, what I want to do is really start back at 1 and revalidate everything from the ground up.

I’m going to begin to revalidate the service, revalidate the customer intentions, the teacher intentions, basically try to get rid of as much assumptions as possible in order to get a clear picture of what the customers actually want and what we can do to provide it for them.

My to-dos for the rest of the week consists basically of reaching out to existing members who have signed up for Lesson Underground (we only have 30 or so, so it should be very simple) and get them on the phone to have a quick discussion about a few things.

1. What their initial goals were when they signed up to use the site
2. Why they did not book a lesson (or why did they book a lesson)
3. What are they willing to pay

I don’t honestly expect everyone to answer or get on the phone with me, but I’m going to try to get in contact with as many people as possible and really define the problem they want solved.

From there, I should be able to craft a clear game plan of what to do next.

I’ll share my findings and thoughts in the next episode.

*Note* I actually recorded this podcast on Monday but am only uploading it today because I’ve been busy scheduling and conducting customer calls.