Moving Fast
Bonjour, Montreal!
As opposed to Collision, Startupfest was a much more intimate event. We found it a lot easier to connect with other founders, mentors, and investors. Everyone was a lot more approachable, and going into the conference, we were more organized in terms of what we wanted to get out of it (and luckily we didn’t have the stomach flu this time).
For a first-time-founder, the conference provided a lot of value through various mentor sessions that helped us with the very problem we were facing: acquiring our first customer. On top of that, there were a bunch of pitch competitions happening throughout the event. One of which was backed by Front Row Ventures, a VC targeted at student founders. Scott got to do an elevator pitch to them—literally in a glass elevator—but it got shut down just as he was about to start due to a tornado. So he pitched from the ground instead. How wild is that!?
Reflecting on our experiences from both Collision and Startupfest, we’ve learned 1) that (unsurprisingly) in-person sales are hard (and very exhausting) but 2) it reinforced importance of our networks and us a team, when it comes to creating early partnerships.
We wouldn’t normally go to so many conferences, but these events had our target customers at them (founders, product managers, and market researchers), so going to Collision and then Startupfest shortly after was incredibly helpful as we iterated on our approach to sales. We still have a ways to go till we become sales experts, but we’re very fortunate to have had these experiences.
Outside of the conference, we had fun exploring Montreal. From biking along the canal, to checking out hidden coffee shops, to random circus performances in the park, at the end of our four days in the city, we didn’t want to leave (Kai especially).
First Pilot Customer (again)
Back in Toronto, our focus was on converting our leads into pilot customers. And we hit a big win with our first paying customer (again)! It was from a lead that Scott made from Collision.
This company was particularly interested in Promptly, because they are not directly connected to the users who use their app (there’s an intermediary party). So, with our AI interviews, they can have in-depth conversations with their end users at scale, and better understand what to build next. This customer is a small step in building out our vision of being ultimate customer discovery platform for PMs (which Scott will touch on in the next blog).
We’re super excited to work with them closely to build out our tech. Considering that we pivoted to this idea, little over three weeks ago, I’d say that’s pretty solid progress.
It was also perfect timing because we had our first official pitch on Thursday to the rest of the Next36 cohort and are now pitching to potential investors.
Iterating the Tech
From a development standpoint, our primary focus has been making an exceptional AI model for asking good questions.
From the demos that we have given at conferences, and using our own software, we realized that our interviewer is pretty solid 80% of the time, but the remaining 20% could use some work. Since then, we have refined a new process for checking to ensure that all outbound questions follow interviewing best practices. In the long-term, this will serve us well as interviews become a piece of what we eventually help our customers with.
Learning to Work Better Together
All three founders with both business and technical experience has been both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it means we are all incredibly adaptable, and can handle pretty much any aspect of the business. But, on the other hand, it also means that sometimes, we step on each other toes resulting in the occasional disagreement or conflict. We sometimes have very different intuitions for making decisions.
We’ve been experimenting with more well-defined roles and responsibilities. Doing a role-rotation of sorts. Additionally, setting solid-objectives to ensure that we are all aligned in the same direction. It goes back to Alignment. We can’t succeed unless we are all fully invested into the success of each other
Plans after Next36
With only a month left in the program, we’ve been thinking about our plans for the fall. Do we stay in Toronto? Go back to Vancouver? Move to Montreal? San Francisco? Does Scott go back to school? What are the implications if he does? What needs to happen for us to make a decision? Not making a decision, is a decision in itself. When do we fully commit?
There is a lot of uncertainty that we have to navigate in the coming month, and many decisions that we have to make, but we’re taking it one day at a time.
We know that we’re on the right track, and if we stick to it, there will be a lot more to come.