Clean Slate
Back to the beginning
Sunk Costs
We’ve decided to pivot, big time. After many weeks and months of banging our heads against whiteboards trying to explore what seemed like every rabbit hole imaginable in the personal connection space, we realized we needed a clean slate.
One of the biggest issues with the space that we discovered, is that it is incredibly tarpitty, relying heavily on network effects and servicing a group of customers with a low willingness to pay
A tarpit idea refers to a concept or project that appears promising but ends up consuming excessive time, resources, and effort, leading to slow progress or being stuck in a state of unproductivity.
After getting over the sunk cost of changing start-up ideas, we realized we needed a clean-slate
A more disciplined approach
To provide more structure to the way that we approached new start-up ideas, we decided to take inspiration from MIT and follow a rigorous 24-step process: Disciplined Entrepreneurship.
Step-0 challenged us to go back to the basics and brainstorm a list of principles of how we believe the world to work. The goal for this was to see if we could uncover. From this, we came up with a list of industries where those principles were violated and then used that as the basis for discovering new start-up ideas.
Put more concretely, one of the principles that we collectively landed on was: “Individuals need immediate feedback to create the best results”.
This held true for me while learning how to yo-yo, getting immediate feedback on how the yo-yo responded (stop spinning, change direction, etc), and when I performed an action allowed me to progress more quickly. It held true for Kai will programming - creating an environment where he could quickly test and see the results of the changes that he made. And it held true for Scott in becoming a self-taught product designer. Although very different experiences, the consequence of us not getting the feedback immediately was delayed learning and growth.
Looking at our experience building Prompt Cards, one of our biggest hurdles was collecting feedback quickly so we could validate/invalidate the idea. The physical and digital nature of the product was a double-edged sword. On one hand, the physical form factor created a memorable experience for the recipient when they later discovered it was customized to them, but it also created a lengthy process of receiving the feedback we needed to iterate.
To fulfill an order, we needed to first go back and forth with our early customers to solidify designs, then send the order with our printing suppliers, hand-deliver or ship the cards to the customer, have the customer set up their account and prompts, and then patiently wait till they used them at an event or conference to gather feedback. We were not learning at the pace that we wanted to, and as a result not building at the pace we wanted to.
Reflecting on our journey with Prompt Cards, we thought about what we wished we had. We wish we had a product that we could ship quickly, and then immediately get feedback on the product from customers. The first part meant that we needed to create a fully digital solution, but tackling the second part was a bigger challenge. This led us to the basis for our new idea. But first, let's begin with the problem (puts on pitch hat)
The Problem
User feedback is incredibly important to the success of any new software product, so much so that entire industries have been built around collecting data on customer product usage to derive insights. Founders and product managers need to understand their users so they can build the right product for them.
Ideally, a product manager would talk directly to all of their users, understanding their story and testing assumptions. But existing tools make this challenging to do at scale: surveys and interviews. Surveys can reach a large audience, but feel generic and lack depth; interviews require significant time investment.
There’s no good solution that sits between a survey or interview.
The Solution
What if you could have the benefits of a survey - being able to collect feedback from a group of users at scale while also being able to dig deeper, understanding the “why” behind their actions and responses?
At Prompt Labs, we are helping product teams leverage AI better understand their users so they can make better decisions to benefit these users. Without scheduling a single meeting, our customers will be able to learn from their apps’ users via automated chat-based interviews. Our AI will be specifically trained for product research to intelligently ask follow-up questions as if it was a UX researcher.
We then plan to package, summarize, and analyze the results into actionable insights so that product teams have a faster feedback loop for making decisions based on their users’ needs. We know that timely and high-quality feedback is essential to building great products, and we help make that a reality.
Playing to our Strengths
Okay, phew, that was a lot!
The three of us are really excited about this idea because it plays to our strengths. Scott spent 12 months as a PM intern and led the Product Management Club at UBC, sharpening his understanding of software products while teaching others. Kai has been a founding engineer and has done countless contracting and freelance jobs, training his product intuition. And I, similar to Scott have also been a PM in the past while challenging my ability to learn from customers from yo-yo projects on the side. So, we believe that we are uniquely suited to tackle this problem. We were surprised we didn't think of this sooner: creating tools for Product Managers.
Ohhh, and fortunately, we can still call ourselves Prompt :)
Our Vision
Revisiting our last blog post, our vision for the world was that: “We believe in a world where people are more intentional with interpersonal relationships, thus unlocking their power.”
Although an entirely different problem space, in many ways this vision still holds true, but instead of building stronger interpersonal relationships, we are helping companies build stronger relationships with their users.
We are creating a tool that helps scales empathy, helping companies better understand their user's needs and pain points to build better products.
Next Steps
We have our work cut out for us as we build out our MVP and try to find a beachhead customer, but we are excited about this new direction.
The path is becoming a little clearer, but the clock is ticking.
If you are a Product Manager, Entrepreneur, or are interested in using our product when it is ready, sign-up for our waitlist:
Ohhh, and we will be at Collision in the coming week if you wanted to meet us in person!
