Few weeks ago I signed up myself and my business partner for Lean Startup Machine Toronto (LSMTO). At that point in time I wasn’t sure what I was getting into, but it exceeded my expectations. The idea was to build validated business in one weekend using lean startup methodology. It seemed to be impossible, but I changed my mind by the time we were done.

It started on Thursday night off the wrong foot for me – I was tired and wasn’t sure what was happening. I pitched my idea in a very dull manner and it went nowhere! That was upsetting, but nonetheless I had to join another team. We were trying to develop a solution that would help people who hate their jobs.

HireShark Team

From the start it looked like we will not make it, it was only 4 of us, whereas everyone else had 6-7 people on the team. We did not have UI/UX designers, hardcore devs, etc. Thursday night I went home thinking I will stick to my usual schedule and go skiing on Friday – screw LSMTO! Last minute I decided to make the best out of it and I would love to thank our great team for putting their best effort:

• Oleg Melnikov
• Jason Little
• Lily Samerkhanova

2 evenings and 2 full days later we’ve ended up with a HireShark - software as a service that helps small businesses and recruiters to pick top talent out of 100s of candidates that apply for their positions.

Over this time, we have conducted customer development interviews with over 20 potential customers. We have pivoted 6 times – defined our target market, identified the common issue, revamped our solution and shaped the first key features.

Sweat shop - delivering concierge service by filtering resumes manually

As a result, we have managed to sell to 4 customers ouf 7 in the new target market using just mockups of the prototype. We have delivered concierge service to one of the customers by going through 60 applicants manually and figuring out the top 10 to interview (still waiting for results of the interviews). In one weekend our sales totaled $950 via collected credit card numbers, cash, and cheques.

In the nutshell, it was an amazing deep dive into lean startup methodology. It showed that it is possible to build successful businesses right of the hop if you have the right approach and mind set. Here are the 4 simplified steps of getting to success:

HireShark 0.1

1. Conduct as many customer development interviews as possible. Make sure they are well structured and you have your hypothesis and assumptions that you are trying to test.
2. Based on results of interviews, shape your solutions and deliver it as a concierge service – do it manually for as many potential customers as possible, charge money (if it’s part of the business model)
3. Only then get to prototyping and then right away get back to selling the prototype. The goal is to nail the minimal feature set that will sell.
4. Start building the first version, only when you start getting a feel from your customers that you’ve nailed the product – usually expressed in a way of reaching into their pockets and giving you cash, credit card information, or cheques.
   

   3rd customer - Satish Kanwar (Partner, JetCooper)