How I found my way around entrepreneurship at MIT?
I would like to share my entrepreneurial journey at MIT Sloan in the past 6 months.
This piece is intended to be a quick summary, rather than a comprehensive report. It has some lessons about pivoting and primary market research (PMR) for first-time entrepreneurs (like myself) looking to start a business in the U.S.
TL;DR -> The market didn’t respond the way we anticipated so far. But we know, we are on to something.
Why do this?
I have to acknowledge the inspiration I got from “build in public” movement, mostly on Twitter. Building in public basically means being transparent and allowing people to see the building process. It creates trust in self and produces transparency/authenticity.
How did I start?
I came to U.S. last year with the goal of founding a business during my MBA. Quickly met two other Sloanies, equally valuing entrepreneurship over MBA and complementing my skill sets. We had an initial startup idea, even got funding from MIT’s Sandbox Innovation Fund (which provides non-dilutive funding for MIT community).
All looked great, so we started exploring an idea around digital subscriptions to fix the “subscription fatigue”. As consumers ourselves, we were;
- frustrated with high recurring fees,
- overwhelmed with the plethora of subscriptions in the market,
- weary of managing many subs
We were smart enough to talk to customers first. Here is a quick read summarizing our findings if you are interested in learning more: (don’t forget to give me some claps)
What did we do next?
Meanwhile, we started working at MIT fuse (The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship’s micro accelerator) for a more hands-on and structured experience.
Then, we set out to build a marketplace, where users create their own subscription bundles (e.g. Apple One or Disney+ but across providers). Thus, costs would go down and the discount cliff would create sticky customers for providers.
Everyone loved the idea, but we had to find a way to acquire users. We curated subcription bundles based on interest groups. (e.g. 4 podcasting tools bundled with a 30% discount). We had a list of 50+ bundle ideas (cycling, fantasy football, PhD student, new moms etc.). Another 3-min quick read summarizing our approach written by Yohei (my co-founder)
We attacked every possible watering hole for these communities (Reddit, FB groups, forums, Instagram influencers etc.). It took us couple of weeks to realize that IT’S HARD to sell a subscription. There is a reason for service providers’ acquisition costs (CAC) are high. And yet, we were trying to sell 4 subs in a bundle.
So, we pivoted (wait what?)
We needed a new approach. We started offering a free-of-charge concierge service. After onboarding, we streamlined the user’s interactions with their existing set of subscriptions. Moreover, we introduced the user with new services through personalized recommendations.
This experiment is still running. Results are TBD. But, the feedback we receive from customers is promising. We know, we are onto something.
By the way, if this is interesting for you, go check out scribeup.io and start using our low-tech MVP. One of our features is risk-free trials, which allows for safe experimentation and takes out one big hurdle facing the consumer.
Please reach out if you have any feedback or simply want to talk about this. My DM’s open.
