16 Dec 2013
Josh

What we've learned about Exist and communication

Recently I sent out an email to everyone on our Exist waiting list. I wanted to share it on the blog too in the interests of transparency, and to talk about what we learned from emailing everyone.

Dear Exist family, friends, and lovers,

Recently we applied to a startup incubator in Sydney called Startmate. We made it through the initial application process and were shortlisted for the interview round, but unfortunately didn't make it into the program.

We've made the decision to go it alone for now, and use the feedback we received from Startmate to make some changes to our approach. I wanted to share with you what we learned and what we're going to do next.

Applying to Startmate

The process consisted of twenty interviews with investors and mentors over five hours. Gruelling stuff! We answered lots of questions and explored a heap of possibilities for the future of Exist. The process itself was really beneficial in helping us to perfect our pitch and understand the value we want to deliver to users.

A few days later when we found out we didn't make the cut, we were disappointed but understood their reasoning. At this point, Exist is at a very early stage where we haven't proven that people really need what we're making, or that we could bring investors millions of sweet dollars in return.

Our new focus

One of the most common things we heard was that our idea was too broad, and that we need to start with a smaller focus and prove it can work before expanding to cover our bigger idea. After much deliberation, we decided that the best place for us to focus initially is health and fitness. We're still excited to cover areas like productivity and integrate with every possible service, but we think that our best move is to prove how super-excellent Exist can be at health and fitness before expanding.

What's next?

In line with our new approach, we're focussing on helping users to optimise steps and sleep (with other aspects coming later). I'm adding final touches to the beta as quickly as I can, so that we can let you in soon. Our checklist is a lot smaller now, so we're in the final stretch! I'm really excited to get your feedback on what we've built so far, and start getting your help in shaping the future of Exist.

We're always keen to hear from you, so if you want to chat about any of this, just reply! All your support and enthusiasm so far has really helped keep us going.

Josh

Almost immediately we received feedback and replies on the new approach, and not all of it was positive. People who hadn't even had a chance to try what we've been building were upset and annoyed that we'd changed tack. The idea they'd signed up for was for us to collect all the quantified data they create about their lives, visualising it and making sense of trends that already exist but aren't obvious. We'd gone from the unique angle of tracking your entire life through data, to yet another health and fitness app.

It's crazy and humbling to have people who want your as-yet-incomplete product so bad that they're already disappointed when they perceive you as failing to deliver. But it also highlights the fact that I failed to get across my intended message. They missed the point because I didn't make it.

Communication breakdown

What I'd really wanted to get across was this: we're not letting failure get us down, and we're taking the good parts of the feedback and applying them. We're narrowing our focus so that we can get it out the door quicker, and so we can prove our value proposition on a smaller niche before we tackle the bigger problem. Our initial idea is still, and always was the end goal, and we're heading towards it as fast as we can.

Startmate would've given us a small investment and allowed us to go full-time, all-out on Exist. We would've had support and a real chance at more investment. We could've focussed on the big idea without worrying too much about how to make money. But as two people working on this part-time we just don't have the resources to launch with anything near that end goal, that big idea. So it's better to focus and perfect that nugget of usefulness than launch with something half-realised, or just put off launching for another year. Because launching is good.

The main thing I learned from these misunderstandings was that I'd assumed too much. And you know what they say about that.

Explicit is better than implicit

When you're working on a startup and thinking about it and living it constantly, you have an idea of it in your head that you may not even be aware of. When you talk about it, it's hard not to subconsciously assume that others can see the whole picture too. But they can't. It's in your head. (And your co-founder's, hopefully.)

Many of the people you're contacting in this kind of scenario are on the latter half of a broad spectrum between "friend who follows with interest" and "guy who came across you randomly, signed up months ago, and promptly forgot you existed." It's not enough to gently remind them what you're building. You have to be clear and explicit about all things, as if this is the first time they've ever been told what you're doing. In our case, I should've clearly stated the reasoning behind our change of plan, and reiterated that we were still aiming for the same end goal.

The process of building Exist has been one of learning and iterating and learning some more. It turns out that even when sharing what you've learned, there's always some more learning to do.

I'm @joshsharp on Twitter. Say hi there if you'd like to congratulate/berate me on learning/not learning enough.