Hamish advises marketplace founders to start narrow, stay glued to user feedback through calls and Facebook groups, and focus on a few unlocking initiatives instead of feature bloat. He learned this watching HelloFresh and Blue Apron: simplify early or waste years.
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You, of course, have some really awesome experience with HelloFresh and now Briabook. So do you have any tips for earlier stage marketplace founders that you'd like to share that might be helpful?
Having a really narrow focus at the start and just hunting for product market fit and getting to know your users as much as you possibly can. I'm sure, you know, there are a million books that can better explain that to me, but I've really sort of lived that of, of Sitting there and listening to your customers and not being afraid to get on the phone and ring someone up or email someone directly or just say, here's— we get on a WhatsApp. I've got a WhatsApp group with 100 brides and grooms and people would be like, oh, that's so intrusive. Or shouldn't you be doing more important stuff? But it keeps my finger completely on the pulse and any second I'd say, I've got a weird idea. I'll just message, what do you think of this? And it's like a superpower. I've got a Facebook group with 12,000 brides in it. I could say I had a weird idea trying to create those communities, even if it's 5 friends, and then hopefully it's 5 users, and then hopefully it's 100 users. And just constantly checking that, it's, you know, it ends up being like such a secret or such a superpower and seems so like basic, but it's just like people just tell you the answer if you're wondering something. You just ask 10 people and you're like, oh, obvious option A is the right one because that's what they all want. And I might have thought option B was right, but now I know like, oh, I'm wrong. Look, then my ego, and now I just go ask them for answers every time. And then the other ones I'd mention is like, think a lot, think a lot. And this might sound strange early on, but trying to think about sequencing. I, you know, try and help lots of early-stage founders. And I think everyone who's entrepreneurial is optimistic, is creative, got big ideas and wants to do everything as quickly as you possibly can. And I'm one of those people myself, but some brilliant people around me, one of the things they've helped enormously with, and especially like sounding boarding with investors being like, right, well, we want to Conquer the world, you know, what's the order to doing it? You've got these 10 brilliant ideas, actually, which one should you do first? Which one unlocks? Or, you know, if you're trying to unblock the river, start with the dam at the top and that water will help knock the next dam down. And by the 5th dam, the water just does it itself. And if you're trying to go up the other way or trying to do them all at once, just like knackering, you never know if you're making progress. Team will get like frustrated. So it's just like, right, what? You know, and you know, HelloFresh people are still coming. Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? Why is it still? It's a box. Most people are getting three meals. You know, they've just added desserts and a bit of this, bit of that. Blue Apron, you know, was doing desserts and wine pairings and ready meals. 5, 6 years before us. It was like, oh shit. Like, you're just like, keep it simple. Get your, get your, get your, um, get the— I don't know what it is. You just keep sharpening your spear. Go, go, go before you start trying to put everything else in. Um, and just spending a moment as early as you possibly can thinking about that can save you like years in the long run.
