Investing in quantifiable hypotheses (weekly leanstartup call)

Did all that come through?

No, I. I got cut out after.

Investing in teams.

We're not investing in.

Yeah, we're so excited to have you join, but I think we might have to kick you off until you can. Can you get headphones?

Yeah, I can do that.

Let's kick him off. Okay.

Is it good now?

Yep, much, much better.

Okay, cool.

All right, so. Oh, I kicked him. Come back. I kicked you off.

Can you hear me, Adam? All right, Excellent.

Yep, I can hear you perfectly.

I'm back.

All right, so I think we're getting our act together because it's only 1:31. It was 10 minutes into the call last time before we even got on track. So two things that these calls are you improve on the technical part. So if people know that they're pitching, maybe test your stuff beforehand, bring headphones. We'll do our best. You know, the whole point of this community is that there's high tolerance for failure in this community, which makes it pretty fun all the way around, and the expectations are pretty low. That being said, what we are trying to do, and this will answer Ben's question, what we are trying to do, I think I won't say it's visionary, but the goals are pretty lofty. So rather than investing in traction, this is what I was saying before, rather than investing in traction or scale or even smart teams, sort of just want to invest in learning and invest in experiments. I think that's the best way to fund early stage companies. I think it's the best way to give people an opportunity to get small amounts of money to get started. And obviously it's a good way for me to continue to. To. To continue on this lean startup journey. So props to Eric Greeson and Steve Blank. I think we're going to put this on YouTube. So we're going to start being real conscientious about this stuff. So, yeah, and I have some. I'm going to have some mentors join the call each week to hold me accountable. Obviously. Now we think that giving money away, we can't just say that just because we're writing checks. We can do anything we want and promise. I, I think there's a huge responsibility on our part to not fuck around with promising money. But on the other hand, we see people that just want a handout and want money, and it's going to be tricky. So we're going to do our best and be reasonable on both sides of the table. I think it's pretty straightforward. As long as you are using the funds to Run an experiment. That's the basic vision. I was just talking to Ben before the call. We might limit the funds. Like if you're just testing anything, that's not always helpful. But on the other hand, I don't want to start being the guy that just judges if it's a good experiment or a bad experiment. At some point. I want to use the Facebook group and some of the written mediums that people sometimes get frustrated with to at least say that they're testing anything and then use this call to maybe fund the higher stage. People that are testing the right thing, that are testing things quickly, that have good metrics, that are testing unknowns, not just testing, you know, the consulting model, which is not a disrespect to the last call. We still, we funded them and they might be listening. Yeah, we want to test new unknown disrupt. You know, I guess disruptive is a little bit of a buzzword, but risky assumptions, testing them the right way, making the experiments good, meaning that the cause and effect are in sync. So if you want to prove that people need a new bill paying software but you offer them free pizza to come to your event, that doesn't prove that people want bill paying software. That proves that people want free pizza. So I think it's, I think we finally gotten to the point where we can break this into two tiers. Testing anything and testing things the right way. I know I've promised funding as long as you test anything. I still, I think we're going to follow through that. We will give you some money, maybe 500 bucks minimum for putting yourself out there. But ultimately my goal is to make it so that you're getting that five grand, but that you're testing the right thing. And I think the only way to do that, since it is a little subjective, is not me saying yes or no, but maybe the mentors vote, I guess, sort of like Shark Tank. Or maybe your peers vote on whether it's a good experiment or not. I don't know. So I'm just throwing that out there. Anything that covers.

How about for you, Adi? Does that give you a good idea?

Yeah, I mean, I was reading through the group and everything and I think everything makes sense to me.

All right, cool. So we'll introduce adi. He's been one. He was one of the first people that finished 100 interviews. Obviously that in and of itself we've gotten a little bit away from that, focused back on our end. The experiments themselves, not just the interviews, but the interviews were a way for us to get started. And that was our thesis. Will people even do the interviews at all? Obviously, now we're testing this new thesis. Can people even create a testable hypothesis? And ultimately is this model either selecting the right startups or actually teaching the right. So which to me is the better hypothesis? Can we prove that entrepreneurship actually can be taught? So I don't want to just be a better selection like a better stock picker. Imagine if this program actually does shift the curve and actually is that value add that all the other programs say they are. So. So Adi was one of the first people that did 100 interviews, I believe. I think we, I think he ran like four experiments when we were first getting started. So I think we. And I think we funded. I think we actually gave him money, like three different. I think one of them he ran on his own. But I think we gave you. We gave you some money, right? All right, so we gave him some money, he ran a couple of experiments and then what happens with. A lot of times, a lot of times this happens after one experiment is sort of like a pause or a reset and it's like, what do we do next? So I thought it'd be really cool if we brought him back. Give us a quick, quick timeline on like what you did. Everyone else is going to have like three to five minutes, but you're going to have an extra time especially. I think we're doing good on time anyway, like your journey. Spend like two or three minutes talking about that. But then ultimately, what I always do and I always will apologize if it comes across rude for the people coming up. We don't want your business plan, we don't want your pitch deck. We don't want anything. We just want to know that the thing you're testing next and by when. But since you're starting the show, give us a little bit of the journey.

Experiments that we did. We kind of, I guess, wanted to prove that there were, there were these students. So our whole thing was to have like a college resource for students where they could find like notes, exams and everything all in one. So we did a lot of asking around college students in the Umich campus when we first got here. And it was a lot different from when we first did our like, first couple experiments that Adam mentioned because we didn't have direct access to the market. But now when we all got here, we asked people that were directly at University of Michigan and we realized that there was a lot less interest and a lot. The problem that we were trying to solve was not as big as of a problem that we originally thought it was. And then on the other side side of things, there was. There are so many other similar, I guess, startups that are solving the same problem as we, and those are definitely more developed. So that was the first thing we noticed. And then this is just a side thing, but we definitely all got distracted by school. So after we first came in and we did those experience and we realized that maybe this problem isn't one that's worth solving because it is already being solved and it's not as relevant as a problem. So I guess that's the biggest thing we learned after doing those first three experiments. This would be like our. I guess we just did this on the side just to see if it was a feasible problem to solve, but then we realize that it's otherwise.

All right, okay, what can you do next?

What was your next step after you realized that this wasn't the right path?

So we talked after this. We kind of talked to a lot of our personal friends and we asked them what their opinions were, and we got a lot of mixed feedback from that. Going back to what I said earlier, a lot of people in our hall and even in. I know a lot of upperclassmen because of my brother, he goes here as well. So we asked a lot of these people, and they said they've already had established resources that they use, and those are some resources that they've been using since their freshman year of college and even in going into college as a high school senior just to explore what college classes they could take, what professors they should take. So after that, I guess we kind of took a pause and we wanted to see whether all of us were still willing to, I guess, pursue this problem despite knowing all the things that we learned. But then recently we came together and we just started brainstorming more problems that we've experienced in college. And I guess we kind of abandoned that idea and moved on to another, more personal problem that all of us face. And I can tell you guys about that if there's time, but I guess that's what we learned from the previous experience.

Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said about. People throw the product market fit term around a lot, but founder vision fit, you know, and like, do we even care about, like, why do we even want to solve this problem? What's our. What's the point? Are we just trying to learn something and get involved in the entrepreneurship, or do we really care about solving this specific problem? So I think that's interesting. We could Save that for another call. The other thing that's interesting is like being able to continue. I don't want to throw the pivot word around too much, but being able to sort of continue your learnings into the next thing, even when it's a restart or even when it's like, even when you're not starting from scratch. But what did we learn that we can apply into this next experiment rather than just like trying something new and then, you know, starting over and then trying something new and starting. Like, how do you start this self fulfilling this, this virtuous cycle? And really like the lean start, really is that like their logo of, you know, a circle? Like, it is a virtuous loop as long as you can carry the learnings over, no matter how small. Because it's like a compound interest thing. It adds up over time. So I think restarting is. I was thinking about, maybe this is a blog post. Like, restarting is like, what's the other. What's the non. Compound interest? Just interest. What's it called when you learn that in like fifth grade? Like linear. Linear interest. Or I guess it's just interest. All right, so interest versus compound interest. And a math teacher shows you, like, one curve goes like this and the other curve goes straight like this. Like, to me, that's what lean startup is. Even if it's a tiny percentage of learning, as long as you build on it rather than just getting the regular return. That's how you succeed. So, all right, I've taken too much time and now whenever we're on schedule, the time gets away from us. So what are you trying to do next? How can we. I was thinking of doing a template. I keep thinking like, oh, the new iteration is going to make it crystal clear there's always going to be a date, you know, because people are always going to follow instruct. There's always going to be a date, there's always going to be a number, and there's always going to be a use of funds that correlates to the experiment. And as much as I love the community and I know how hard this is when I'm on the other side of it, that hasn't been the case yet. So I think I might just have to create a fill in the blanks. So let's start with you. I need this much money to prove that this many people will do this.

Okay.

So I can give a little background first. So when we brainstormed, we kind of wanted to move on to a different problem, and that was with our Access to gyms. So in college, we only have one or two relative gyms here, location wise, and they're always very crowded at the times we go. So we wanted to figure out the best times to make your gym experience more fast because we all know that we have busy schedules. We have classes on and off throughout the day. So I guess what we wanted to prove is whether people would sign up for our gym notification service because we believe that. Because the people that sign up believe that we will help them find the emptiest times to make their gym experience more fast and enjoyable. So we want a hundred dollars to prove that 4,000 college students would have this problem and would sign up for our service.

How would you spend a hundred bucks?

By when? By me, by when?

And how would you spend the hundred bucks by when?

I think we would need a couple of months at least just to get. No way.

No way. Why do you need a couple months? How many to prove 4,000?

Or would you say $100 to prove that 4,000 college students.

All right, so if you need a couple months to prove that 4,000, you need one month to prove that 2,000. Right. So see what I did there, everyone, I think we're finally recording some of this stuff. So if you need two months to prove 4,000, you need one month to prove 1,000. So you need two weeks to prove 500. We can keep going for a. Two weeks is reasonable. So instead we'll cut it in half. So since we, you can argue that it will ramp up at the end. I always get that argument. So I'm prepared for it. So instead of having to prove in the first two weeks that you get 500, first two weeks, you should be able to get 250. And then just again, we weren't really going to comment on the, on whether or not it's a good value proposition, but it's fun to play devil's advocate. And your, your thesis is that people like empty gyms and maybe people like crowded gyms because it's more fun and it's, you know, they're not worried so much about speed. They're more worried about like, showing off or having, you know, you know, meeting a girl or meeting a guy or some. Something like that. So, so again, that's, that's more just the fun stuff for me to play devil's advocate. But the data will speak to it and that's what we're going to continue to run this program on. So it's fun over a beer or something to talk about to Speculate why, but I love this experiment, so absolutely approved. These are the kind of experiments we want to prove and the kind of teams we want to be working with. I think you still have access to our Facebook thing. So you're just the pursuit of people listening. There's just an unlimited supply of Facebook ads. That's the first thing. So, yes, you can use a landing page. You have one already.

I think we're going to create a landing page first, and then I think we want to send out surveys as well, because we have access to a survey system that we could send.

So that's going to be one of the big rules. There are some value adds of surveys, but I know people keep thinking that we keep adding more and more rules of things that you can't do and ways to not get funding. It has nothing to do with. We actually want to fund people. This is fun for us. No fucking surveys. Not in the beginning. You have a thesis. People that either either care about the gym being empty and your service or not. If you don't get it, then you can learn about why. And so you can maybe talk to people, go to the gyms themselves. And part of the. Part of this program was that you should have been doing that already. You're sort of grandfathered in because technically you should be doing 100 new interviews on gyms because it's not the same segment as textbooks, but it's the same kind of college student thing. So you get a little benefit of the doubt there. But yeah, no fucking surveys, no focus groups. That's just a rule. Maybe we're wrong, but it's our money. So we get to make the. Someone's giving me. Who's giving me all that. It's fun. Who is that? I feel like the feature is broken. They're giving me so many.

So.

Yeah. And Deanna, I know you're trying to get in. Give us a second. You should be able to hear, but yeah, I love the experiment, obviously. I think I've seen your senior landing pages before. You probably have one done by the end of the weekend. If you have it done by the end of the weekend, we'll give you a $200 bonus.

Sounds good.

Just for fun. You can spend it on ads. You can spend it on spending a dinner at. In Ann Arbor.

Go to.

Go to Rick's.

Right?

That's where my wife went to school. All right, so now Luke's saying he can't hear anything, so. But I think other people can still have 11 people on. All right, so I Think that's a productive call. Yeah. No surveys. I won't say it again. Just to get the adulation from whoever was clapping before. No surveys, no focus groups. I would argue that you could even do this without the hundred bucks on Facebook. You would put something up at the gym. A flyer with an email form or a rip off thing like sign up for our new app or something. Tweet this code to get the code or something. But yeah, we'll do it on Facebook. You can target it just at Ann Arbor students. It should be a pretty straightforward test. I love it. Good stuff. All right, cool. All right, Luke, try to call in and if you still can't hear, we'll figure it out. Adi, you can stay on as a.

I have to go at two though, but.

All right, that's cool. No problem. Yeah, we're still figuring this stuff out. All right, Luke, try to. Trying to press a button where it says call in Eboy. Yes. If you can't pitch your product, but you can pitch your hypothesis. And what, you need funding to run an experiment. We've got Luke ahead of you and healthcare humanized ahead of you. Wow. Even Josh says he can't hear.

And see, you can hear.

Oh, sorry. Okay, good. All right. So. All right, fuck it. Eboy, you can go quick.

We'll.

We'll test this new format. You've three minutes to come up with a. A metric. Hello.

How are you?

Quantifiable hypothesis. So if you waste time giving us background, it's on you. You get the funding, you can get up to 500 bucks. Up to five.

Well, I make these pillows.

That's my promises. I need this much money.

I need to figure out how to attract customers. I have no idea. So I guess, I guess I would take the cash for marketing, Facebook ads, stuff like that.

All right, fair enough. So since we're experimenting with this new format, we'll start with. Start with 250. So if you need $350 would prove that how many people will. The action is pretty clear. Buy your pillow. So we have the action. How many people you think with 250 bucks you can get to buy your pill? All right, so I believe that. So I need $250 to prove that 100 people will buy this pillow. Now, now the. To keep it in. In concert with what we're trying to do here. Check it out. A pillow is not really an innovation, but what maybe yours is. So.

Okay.

Yep. So the only final part of the equation is who are those first hundred? So they're early, early adopters. And why. And what's the value problem?

Millennials, you know, people who are moving.

Experiment in this case is pretty straightforward.

Just, you know, a lot of young 20 year olds who want to have an art type of sense into their. Into their environment. I think a lot of guys, I mean, I'm sort of targeting young men who want to have like, kind of like their own. Customize their apartment for the first time, kind of transitioning from maybe a college lifestyle or a roommate lifestyle into their unique owning at their own house. So that type of, you know, there's CB2, there's West Elm, but those are all sort of, like, geared to, like, women, couples. But there's no, like, young guy type of markets. I mean, these guys have their own apartments now.

They want to.

They want to make it their own. So I make these pillows with. And these graphics. I'm selling the graphics. Pillows are what it goes on, but the graphics are what I'm selling. So kind of like customize it to themselves. Like, hey, I'm myself now. I'm customizing my own environment. My man. My man. Den, which is mine. Environment.

All right, I'll buy it. I'm not. I don't know if it's like, you know, it's not the next Instagram maybe, but I don't know, it's not my place to judge, and that's not what this thing is for. So you hit the minimums. You actually. Good for you. You got metrics. I'll let Ben and I. I don't want to just talk. Hold me accountable. I don't. You're new. We've never really done it. Most of the people on the call, we're already in touch with and have gone through some customer development and so track me down. And I hope you like my Facebook group. And the $250 ad credit is approved.

The skull pillow, man. You like my skull pillow?

It's awesome. No one can hear me. This is not great.

Can't see it.

Oh.

A little bit further. There it is again. So some people can hear us and some people can. Sorry. We're getting a lot of feedback that people can't hear us.

Yeah, Hopefully they're hopefully on the replay.

It'll.

It'll be.

It'll.

This. The sound will stick. So that's the best thing I can offer people. So stick around, I guess.

Okay.

Just refresh and fix it. All right, cool. Josh. So all right, so any other. We'll spend one. This is a pretty straightforward one, but that's not good or bad. We're trying to push. We have to start somewhere. So Ben and Adi, any comment first on the experiment itself?

Are you going to try different? You have text. You gotta use text ads with the photo and it's gonna send people to your landing page or to your website.

Well, I mean, if I could ask you that, I mean is it better for Facebook to hit a large market or more be. I mean more of the niche and target this market of this 20 year old, young, 20 men type of target. Which is why I want to go. I mean I've done large market, large Facebooks but those sort of don't work too well. But like, I guess I should try like a niche market now.

Yeah.

I guess so.

Yeah.

Sounds like you answered your own. I was gonna not jump in there. I was gonna let Ben answer it. Sounds like you asked your question. But let's see what Ben has and then I'll have a little bit to pile on there and then we'll just.

Okay, so you answer your own question about turns to your niche because that was actually your pitch to us to begin with. But then it's going to take you to take the clicker to where?

Well, it would take it to my store, you know, my website with the various variations of the pillow and the type of that would be the destination.

Okay. Okay. If you're good with this, Adam, I'd like to see a website. So post a website so we can see it and what you do with it.

Cool, thank you.

Well, thanks for your time. I appreciate it.

My final comments were like, even though this is a straightforward thing, I do think there's lessons and nuggets of learning everywhere and even just a pillow and it's not offending you. But yeah, I mean I think the lesson of starting smaller and focusing and on being on Facebook and are you ab testing your messaging and you know, is your. Is the process as streamlined as it can be so when you get. When it links to your page, it shouldn't be to your whole store. If someone thinks they're buying a pillow, you know, make the value proposition very clear. This is the pillow. The action is this. And this is why you want my pillow.

$40.

Yeah, I think this is a valuable, valuable add ins. How much is it? $40. All right, so that's. That's a dream. Pillows for. For $40 within two weeks. All right, let's see what happens. And it's. This is. That's just the theory.

Sold 5,000 pillows.

We actually see you in two weeks and say, what happened? What did you learn?

Thanks, Adam.

Yeah, maybe, maybe. All right, we're kicking. We're kicking you off. We're going to see if Luke joins. Track me down on Facebook. And we. We have an account that's set up just.

Adam, just really quick. Just getting on. I just want to say it's really great. This is lessons for learning everywhere, no matter what it is. Yeah, good, good. Should encourage other people to jump on, too.

This is fun shit. All right, cool. Well, that's what I was going to push. In the future, we're going to do something like, the more people that are on the call, the higher the minimum investment is. So, like, I don't know if that's a little. That's a little pyramid scheme.

Y.

But, you know, we get a thousand people on the next call. We'll give a thousand dollars minimum for waiting for something like that.

I think I have to go at this point, Abby.

Okay, cool. All right.

Thank you. All right. All right. All right, Luke, you can try and join. If you can't get on, we'll go to Deanna.

All right.

Diana, why don't you try to join this time? Healthcare Humanize. You were able to join. Try to dial in Deanna.

That.

That's worked for other people that couldn't hear. All right, Josh, why don't you take a seat? You can serve as mentor and you can also tell us. I know you're running an experiment too, which is my dream. Also that people are mentoring each other, but also running their own experiments. Oh, and I promised I'm running experiments, too. So my goal is to fix the form well enough so that at least 100%. I'm going to refresh now. About 30% of people filling out the form.

He looked good.

We can see you perfectly fine. Yeah, I was gonna say it looked pretty. Pretty good. So for me, right now, we're beyond the vanity metrics of that people would finish the interviews or that people will obviously ask for money. We're not quite at the point where we're gonna put a metric around, you know, if this thing is working. So my next metric that I'm trying to prove is that I can make the form smart enough that 90 to 100% of the people that fill it out are at least filling out testable hypotheses consistent with what we're trying to do here. They won't necessarily be the thing that I want them to test. Right now. That number is around 30%. So 30% of the time I Look at the form. And without even talking to one of the other mentors like this. Okay, this is a testable hypothesis, but it's still only 20 or 30%. So it's my job. There's no stupid users. There's just stupid creators like me. So it's my job to fix the form so that the only way to finish it is by entering test while hypothesis.

Okay. And Josh is back. Good.

Yeah, for some reason there, Adam, you're back. Now. For some reason, your feed keeps it blocked out on me again. Now, Ben, can you see Adam?

I can see you both and hear you both. All right.

Okay.

Yeah.

For whatever reason, Adam keeps getting cut out on me.

Well, you're gonna do most of the talking, so let's see how this. Let's get it started.

I'm hopefully. Okay, that sounds good. Well, you can. You can just pipe out. You can just tell. Tell me what Adam says, or he can type it in the. In the thing. So I'll just review my experiment then. So I am. The first stage of my experiment is really just getting people to a webinar. That's the action I want them to take, is to sign up to be on the webinar. My hypothesis is that half the people that sign up will show. And so the numbers I put on that, my goal Is to hit 100 signups and then, you know, then have 50 on the call. And then after that experiment's done, then I'll have another experiment that relates to closing another product on the webinar itself. So that's kind of where I'm at with that. So the webinar is just going to be about. It's for startup social entrepreneurs. And so it's just 10 tactics to rapidly accelerate the launch of a social entrepreneur's business. So spend about 30, 40 minutes just providing really valuable content. And then at the end, you know, we'll make the. Make the close, make the offering. But like I said, the first experiment is really just getting people to that webinar. It was my test. So I've been running some Facebook ads around that, and then also a lot of organic kinds of things. So, like. So my goal is 100. It's next week on the 28th. I have 72 right now. So I need 28 more signups over the next week to hit the goal. My ads seem to be going fairly well, although I think they're more expensive than they should be. I have them hitting about seven and a half dollars per conversion. I had one day where I was like, down to $2 per conversion on those ads, but then that's stopped. So I think that's pretty well it. Ben, what question is Adam having for me?

You have a question for him, Adam?

No, we'll fix it. Hopefully our. Our hardware is working next week. I like the fact that he's anticipating the next move, but if it was someone else, I probably. Josh gets a little bit of extra leeway because how helpful he's been, but just focus on that one metric. So it's. Will they show up? Yes or no? They do. Then we'll focus on the next metric. I was just actually just watched the movie the Martian. This is like solve a problem, solve the next one, solve the next one. If you solve enough of a row, you get to go home or something like that. So sort of. How about startups, like, before you go, continue. Josh hung up on solving 30 problems at once. And then we solve none of them.

Okay, I see a speak shaking ahead. Well, what. I could repeat what you just said. He's giving you a little bit of leeway. He said that if you're anybody else. He said really just one metric, one at a time. Yes or no. So do people sign up? Would be the first. The first piece of feedback. And he made the correlation to the movie the Martian. It's like you solve one problem and then the next one and the next one, and then you get to go home once you solve the final one. So it's pretty good.

Okay. Yeah. So I mean, the one thing I'm interested in then right now is did they sign up? Yes or no.

Okay.

And I'm sitting at about 20% of the people that hit the page will actually sign up.

All right. And Ben, just have him report on the.

Yeah, I agree with that. My. My challenge is. I don't yet know.

Sorry, not Josh.

How much each lead is worth for me. But that's the data I'm hoping for off the webinar. So if I have, you know, if I've spent. If it's 100 leads. So $700, you know, then it's just a question of how much do I make off the call in terms of. So I agree. Yeah, that's. That's really a big question of whether or not it's worth. It is. What can I. How much can I sell the consulting for? How many consulting seats do I close that kind of.

And just he's wearing both hats. If he can give us a quick update on the two other experiments. Both people didn't make it to the Call. But if he can give us in under two minutes each. So, Adam, the other two experiments and the quantifiable hypotheses.

The other two experiments, the quantifiable hypothesis.

The ones. The ones that I'm mentoring.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah. So then the other experiment, and I was hoping that they would both be here, but I don't see either one of them. So, Jonathan, what he and I are working on, he wants to run an experiment that tests. So he's in Seattle, and he wants to test basically limiting friction between someone trying to give to a homeless person on the street. So his hypothesis is that in the exact moment when someone could be given to. If you can provide clarity, in other words, you run into someone who's homeless on the street, if you can provide clarity in terms of where those funds will go, then that will increase the amount of transactions that occur. So his goal is, in four weeks, to get 50 people to give $2 to somebody using their system. And right now, he wants to do an app that revolves around beacons that basically would pop a notification in your phone immediately as you got close to somebody. What we're still working on, though, is to come up with three alternatives to that. That's something Adam has guided us to. To make sure that's really the only way to actually test our hypothesis. So that's. That's where we're at on. On that one. And then my other experiment with Susan, she is running a training program that's aimed at.

Hang on, Josh. Feedback on that.

Wait, Ben.

Yeah, I. Another reason we do these calls is so that I'm held accountable. For a while, I was feeling guilty that I'm just judging everyone's ideas. So I think you were on the last call, so you have the context. We won't repeat it to everyone in the audience, but we will later or in writing. Yeah. The issue is not so much the amount of money that he was asking for, but are the beacons the thing? Obviously, we see founders, and this happens all the time, and it's not necessarily a bad thing, but people fall in love with technology. And are the beacons the thing that prove that they're gonna. Are they giving because the beacon technology is cool? Are they giving because Josh, you know, because they just want to give to the homeless, and he's in the way that he's there that day, or are they really giving because this service tracks the end use of the funds? So I guess that would qualify as the second tier of what we're trying to do here. We Agreed that he gets some money because he did state any testable hypothesis. But to get to that second level, like, is there really a correlation between why they're giving to him? So, Ben giving.

You see what I wrote, Adam?

Yeah.

And Josh is reading it now.

The issue is not the money, but the beacons. The thing prove it works or do they give because the service tracks? So, yeah, so what I don't know if I completely understand, is there a correlation between giving to him or sharing? So, yeah, the big question and what he wants to do is he has those beacons that if you get near, will essentially ping your phone with a notification through the app. And so I don't know if I understand Adam's question, but I can tell you what we were talking about is, you know, with those beacons, the question is because it lets people know right. When they're actually in the area of somebody. And so if you can create that relationship with trust. Oh, hey, Jonathan, you're a good spokesperson. I'm doing my best here. And I can't. For some reason, I can't see or hear Adam. So that's part of my challenge.

Can you reach out to each other? Yes.

Okay, cool.

Perfect.

Looking cleaned up, Adam. Yeah, I mean, to sort of address the whole solution thing, it has been challenging to try and think of three other ways to deliver clarity in the moment without requiring additional actions from the user. The experiment is designed such that we're reducing the amount of actions necessary to actually give the $2 that Joshua talked about. How the solution is structured is not relevant to the experiment in my mind.

Yeah, I agree. That's why. And I feel guilty that we're withholding from. The whole point is putting ourselves out there to show that, like, we're not just making people jump through hoops to run experiments. Because I actually want to give you this money as soon as possible. But I don't think your experiment is proving that people are giving because they know where it's going. I think they're giving because you're making it easier to give, which is a totally fine hypothesis.

I mean, it's a combination of sort.

Of what you're testing, And that's where. Even though you. And this is sort of where we. And I don't want to get too hung up on it because now there are other people waiting and we could take it offline and report back to the group. But even for people that are saving the world, we're still going to be hold you accountable to one of those things. And that's sort of what we spent time on the last call doing Ozon saying to let me ozan take a seat. I'm not sure if this thing can handle four mentors and there's only five boxes.

Let's see if I could drop off Adam.

Yeah, so I think. All right, so it was on next time. But yeah, I think. I think you just have to pick one. And then the experiment. And this also goes to show that it's level two, not level one. You qualified for some money and we're gonna give you something to either, you know, just to help out. But for level two, I really need.

To correlate your value proposition between storage, locker facilities, between cafes, restaurants who have agreed to sort of take this givesafe credit as currency. So we have like this sort of safety network in place that actually offers that sort of clarity. Like if I give through this system, I know it can only be spent at location A, B, C, D, E.

All right, so that counts as one alternative. So at least now you're thinking outside the box. We're going to follow up on the Facebook group and people can follow on the next call. But that's all I'm looking for, that correlation. And I think you're close and we're not, especially with this. Good cause we're not going to pull funding from you or anything, but to really, you know, make a huge impact in the world. These are the people that need more pushing, not less, you know, so. So I don't. I don't feel that I did a lot of social good work and I would always feel the most guilty, like giving. Giving honest feedback to the people that were changing the world. When we gave, like when we were super honest to the people with the regular app, you know, app ideas. And I think we can be more helpful to people like you. So, yeah, we're not going to let you off the hook, but we are.

Saying that we are going to help the good work. Afterwards, testing the marketing and adoption. The platform kind of needs to be in place, but there are some fun other experiments we can do after that.

All right, everyone. Yeah, the hard part is 0 to 1. I don't want to rip off what's his name. But yeah, the hard part, zero to one. Once it works, once. Once you connect the value prop with the user and that's the wine, then it becomes easy to scale and the marketing stuff becomes fun. It's proving the first thing in the first place. Like people care enough about knowing the source that they're able. That they're willing to use your thing or make that extra effort or enable auto pay just to give through you because of the fact that they know where it's going, not just because you're another charity. So I know we said yes last week and we even reported to our community, hey, we funded this guy. You're funded at the minimum. But I want to get you the bigger funding. So I'm choosing for you to withhold funds just for now. But working with Josh and now with Ben and CEOs on our confident we'll get to the better experiment.

Sure.

All right. Get out of here. I think go save the world. I think Luke is ready. All right. We're gonna, we're gonna wrap up soon. Luke.

I'm gonna let well, Josh, Josh and Jonathan both where we lost.

Ozan. See if now you can join. You might be able to. Nice. All right, I'm gonna take a break.

Let's.

You're in good hands with Ozan and Ben. They're gonna hold you accountable. One.

Good.

Awesome. So I don't want to dig too much into the weeds about specific technology that we're building, but I did want to state, you know, the very specific hypothesis that we're trying to test next. Basically, we're trying to get one pre purchase for about a $5,000 implementation. And it's implementation that's going to be bought by a business analyst or someone who's in charge of products at a large company. What essentially they'll be buying is the implementation that automates a lot of the sensors that they have at their company. We're hoping to actually test to see if this is something that's going to be valuable for these companies, valuable for these business analysts hoping to automate their business. And I believe that having one pre purchase would be a very strong indicator.

Of.

The need for this in the niche market that we're serving. So that's something we're hoping to accomplish by May 1st. May 1st is our deadline. We're hoping to get that pre purchase in the door by that date. We've already got the hardware that's set up and we're currently building the software that's going to be complementing that specific hardware for this implementation. So that's the specific hypothesis that we'll be testing over the next couple months. As far as the costs are concerned, I think it's going to be a very minimal, minimal cost hypothesis. We're simply going to be having meetings with business analysts, interviewing them specifically about their needs that their business needs. And it's going to focus around primarily PPC ads and drawing new leads in that way. But I think the strongest leads are going to come from connections that I will be building with these specific organizations. So that's kind of where we're at, where we're hoping to go next couple months.

How will you be reaching out to these organizations, as you said, to meet with analysts.

So I'm primarily going to be using my university's network. There are a lot of business analysts that are recent graduates and also graduates that have graduated maybe 20 or 30 years back. I'm still a student, but I hope to reach out through the alumni networks and get some contacts through those opportunities that I've got.

You want to reach one? Like you said, that one is going to validate your hypothesis, which I might question. But how many people do you plan on talking to in order to get to that one?

I think it's important that I get in strong conversations with at least 10 to 20 different individuals. I'd love to get at least 10 people to say that they're confident that this could provide value for the company. Again, the one that I'm hoping to validate is a pre purchase. That means they're taking a risk on our company and providing not necessarily the money up front, but making that commitment to make a purchase and to see the implementation through to the end. So the validation would be through one pre purchase. But again, I'd only want to go through with or see this experiment as a success if we have 10 to 20 people that indicate to me that this would provide a lot of value for their company. I'm asking for one pre purchase, but I believe we need a lot more feedback than simply one pre purchase to validate the idea.

Sort of hedging there, but you've been with us for a while too, so I think there are two different metrics.

10.

There's another thing I forgot who says it. It might be Paul Graham, but it might be someone you know. It's like one yes is better than 10 maybes. So I agree that one yes might not even be enough. I agree with Ben, But I think one yes is definitely better than 10 maybes. You can use the 10 maybes to learn something and to use that to get to the one yes. But I would say that the 10 maybes could cause you to spin your wheels for a year and the one yes is the first thing. Even that might not be enough, but it's better than the 10 maybes. Yeah, I'll sound like a broken record but the only, my only kind. I think you did a great job. You finally came. We've been talking for a while, so I think you were very prepared with the numbers. So I'd say you definitely passed level one. Now the level two stuff is I think you can go a lot faster than may big deals, Even though they're B2B stuff like you'd be surprised. Like, yeah, it might take you a couple months to sell 10 of these, but if the problem is there and you know enough about your customer and you'd already done 100 interviews, there's no reason why you couldn't close a deal in a month that obviously I'm pushing you faster and it's easier said than done, but it's possible. It's possible and that's all I'm saying. So speed for the level 2 stuff, speed is always going to play in. And what piqued my interest in the beginning is obviously you, you built a lot of this before you made the sale. I run into this in my enterprise consulting and still with startups you could probably sell something before you invest in the hardware and the software. But let's follow your path and see if, if you needed to build it in order to make the sale. I, I would argue maybe you didn't, but in your case might be different. So in this case I would just. All right, Damien. Yeah, good stuff. No problem in this case. Yeah. My only real thing is speed, but I think you're doing a great job and we'll keep helping you out. Do you need. So, yeah. So the money you need from marketing.

There'S actually a unique opportunity that I've got to be a part of a small business incubator that my school subsidizes. For $100, both myself and my experienced co founder, we can actually host a small office space there and that's where we can actually conduct a lot of the meetings. So that only be a small portion of where the funds would be going. Most of it would be going to marketing, as you said.

Yep. All right, so you're obviously approved for the 100. You're probably going to approve for the 500 of tier one. Like I said, let's really nail down, let's get you that phase two where you're going faster. The cause and effect stuff is highly correlated and you're testing the riskiest assumption, which you kind of are. Nice job. Keep up the good work. Awesome. All right, we're going to try Diana one more time. One knows better than maybe two. Yep. I Agree. All right, so, Deanna, we're going to try you. If not, like I always tell you, you're one of the. You're one of the ones we're rooting for. But we still need. We still need hardcore metrics and numbers. So let's see if we can. If we can get you in. Otherwise, speak up in the Facebook group. Now, there's a lot of people watching, so I can't just say, oh, I owe you one. All right, so Deanna's isn't working, so I'll just give a short story. She's doing a podcast on women's health. I've been rooting for her since I. Since I met her. She's raising money, though, on Kickstarter. And I've always said that, and I did, I did. I think I did support the campaign. Not for millions, but I made a. I supported the campaign. But what I've tried to say is, and this is sort of similar to Jonathan's, she's awesome and she's doing important work, but being able to raise funds doesn't necessarily prove that the people she's serving want a podcast to solve their problems. So I think there's still two separate. I think she's still running two separate experiments. So I've been. I've been pushing her to sort of run a secondary experiment that is. That more highly correlates an action from the user that directly correlates to her solution rather than just her ability to find people to support her financially. So that's kind of all I'll say about that. But if the whole community can. Can help me help Deanna, I think that's what we're here for. All right, I think that was good. We even got one random. All right, we'll do it again next week. I think we'll. I think this one was even more clear than the last one. By next week, we'll have maybe exactly who's pitching ahead of time. I think we'll still try to take one or two random call ins for up to 500 bucks or of instant. Maybe that'll be our gimmick. But, yeah, we're going to try to keep having three or four discussions of specific testimony hypotheses, and I guess this level one, level two things is starting to make sense to me. So I'm going to go back and see if that's something I can standardize. I think it sounds like it makes sense. Let me see if. Maybe run it by Ben and some of the other mentors, see if that makes sense. Maybe we'll. We'll standardize that on the next call. Because I do think it's important to say yes to everyone. That's sort of what this is about. On the other hand, I don't.

It's not.

Well, I don't have unlimited limited funds and we do have some investors backing this, but, you know, even a million dollars can get spent pretty quick just writing $25,000 checks, you know, on nothing. So there needs to be some balance here. And that's what we're trying to figure out. And a lot of music.

Oh, we see you.

There she is.

Just to free up bandwidth. Give me. I'll get back on if I need to.

Okay, Deanna, we're going to end with you if you can hear me. Yeah, well, I gave my speech anyway, so let's all rally around Diana. If you see her on Twitter or on. In the Facebook group, let's. Let's close this loop with her somehow. Steve Schellenbach, join for a second. I think that's an interesting question.

Howdy.

And then we'll go, am I visible?

Cool.

Yeah, look at that. Is the cost to validate the problem ever higher than the cost?

I'm just thinking about low cost solutions.

The podcast specifically, because how much does it cost to actually build or put the.

Publish the podcast, you know?

Yeah, I mean, fair enough. I think at scale, at the. Do things that don't scale level. Absolutely at scale. Probably not. Like there's a couple of examples of companies like what do they even spend money on? But by the time you just have tons of employees building, you know.

Yeah.

You get a bunch of people just.

Building all the one off features they.

Can come up with. Sorry. Or you just have. You want salary and rent and insurance and you know, so at scale, I'd say probably not, but certainly in the beginning. Yeah, I think that's the definition of doing things that. That don't scale in order to prove. Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know. I think the answer is yes. I don't know if it matters, but I owe you a. Let's think about it and talk about it next week. It's good to see you, by the way. Yeah, it's good. I think we all hold each other accountable to stuff, so I think this community is going both directions. All right, I'll take, I'll take that recap update on Facebook. All right, that's it. We went an hour. Last time we only went a half an hour. I think it's good time. See you next week. See you on Facebook. Cool. This was fun. All right, later.

It.