Yeah if you kind of build, as you're screening,
if part of your screening process is to build your sales pitch,
when you walk into a customer and you try and convince them to buy your product,
if you go through that exercise relatively early on and you just step back and say,
would I buy that or not.
You know if I put myself into their shoes would I buy that.
That in itself is a pretty powerful screening tool.
So typically what you'll find is you can
even role play a sales call with a true customer.
And a lot of people I've found are
willing to help if you go in and your friendly and say,
hey you know I'm a startup I'm trying to get,
people will give you advice and spend a little bit of time with you.
If you have something that potentially could be important to them.
Did you also use any subject matter experts?
You mentioned industry friendly I assume as well.
Yeah. Yeah.
Any advice on that.
So again like I said there's a lot of people that are found that are willing to
kind of help you out and you should take advantage of that in every place that you can.
But again we were focused on trucking so we called some of the local fleets.
We went to visit the truck dealers.
We went to visit anybody that would be willing to take a half hour meeting,
just a quick, "hey this is what we're trying to do,
what kind of advice do you have?"
And the fact that we were actually tied in or we're commercializing
University technology also helped to open some doors
in that people would hear the university,
"Oh yeah we're, we'll spend a few minutes to help the university."
So after that six-month period of time we had the business plan well developed.
We had tested it with some potential customers
and then it was time to go and go as fast as you can.
So we were able to raise some capital,
down here somewhere and get
our prototypes all built and get out there as quickly as we possibly could.
And when you say tested with the customer this was verbal and showing them
some pictures or diagrams or did you actually install anything?
Both. So we started with descriptions of what we were doing and how we would do it.
And we expanded that.
Once we actually had a working prototype we installed in four different fleets in
different segments of the market so that we would test to
see where the product provided more value.
If it was based on the usage of the truck.
If there's more value if they're using it this
way versus that way that that type of thing.
So it was important to test it in different markets.
So huge chicken or egg problem at this stage.
When someone doesn't have anything to test.
And now early on you were there.
So like if when you first went out and started thinking about this,
and somebody said that's great why don't you stop by
tomorrow with six of them we'll put them in the truck.
I think you said you couldn't do that.
We don't have them yet.
We don't have them yet. Yeah. That was validating that someone wanted it.
How did you, how many,
how much time went by before you could actually put something into an actual truck.
So it was probably at the nine month mark that we actually had stuff in to vehicles.
But you've talked about this and you've shown pictures of this and it's an envelope.
Yes.
And when you turn an envelope over we see the back of an envelope.
Can you tell us about that?
It's really hard to get good data.
It's hard to get good market data.
It's hard to get good information about what your product is and how it's going to sell.
You have to do a lot of kind of back of the envelope,
if this will happen then I think this is what is going to be the result.
And you can run different scenarios very quickly and have an idea
for what the tolerance or have an idea of the bounds of where you're going to end up.
So rather than spending a lot of time trying to get the precise inputs to create a model,
it's better to just kind of sketch it out,
do it a few different times and in a few different ways so you
understand what the different potential outcomes are if you're off.
It's really incredibly important to go on the information you have.
Do the best job that you can to verify it,
but you'll never get good information.
So you just have to do the best you can with what you have,
and in a lot of sketching on the back of
an envelope is a good way to get a feel for that.
So doing startups is hard.
It's a lot of hard work it's a lot of hours.
It's- everything is hard.
Trying to make photocopies is hard.
You can't get the credit to lease the photocopier to make copies so
that you can go to a presentation with a customer with something to hand them.
Everything is hard.
So you have to do everything you can to try to make your life as easy as possible.
The last thing that I would say is doing startups,
there's a lot of volatility in it.
You have days when you know you're on top of the world,
it's the best thing that ever happened and you have days where it's the exact opposite.
It's the worst thing that ever happened.
So I always tell people that are getting involved in startups too.
It's really great.
The highs are really high the lows are really
low and the time between the two is very short.
So, try not to get too high.
Try not to get too low try and run the middle as best you can
and just keep focused on your business plan and press through.
David, it's thrilling to check in with you and see what's
going on with you and watch your road journey.
Thank you very much for taking the time to share this.
Yeah, thank you.
Mark WilsonLecturer in Entrepreneurship
