Escape Velocity @Shunya - lessons from first road trip visiting customers(and more..)

Not a click bait. Stay with me, to know what our customers told us on my first 7 day road trip across Delhi, Dehradun, Lucknow & Kanpur, early Jan.

But, first Back to Jan 2020. One moment that changed how I think about customers, forever. This day, at InMobi, with Abhay Singhal. I was leading the InMobi annual event, Catalyst. In the event, Sr. leaders, talk about the last year and the strategic direction for the next. "Bigger, Better, Bolder" was the theme this time around. 

Skipping a few details and to take you back at 6:30 am a day before the big event. We discuss why his narrative is not communicating the larger theme. Within 12 hours entire storyline was changed, the deck was re-created and nothing from the earlier deck was used. His deck had no numbers, not even one(which is very unusual for Abhay). The new deck communicated putting our customers at the heart of the Business, much better than any amount of numbers, ever would.

In two weeks from that, I had the fortune to attend the first every CAB (Customer Advocacy board) in San Francisco. What I learnt that day, was how to listen and co-create with your customers. In Abhay’s own words - what we learnt that day, saved us 6 months. That is just how strong the voice of customer should be, at every company that wants to lead its way into the future.

Customers as co-creators - a theme that stayed with me

Naturally, then when I started Shunya, Customer was the left, right & center of everything we did. This meant time away from things that capital markets care about - "traction". But then traction is not a zero sum game - in that you loose, or win.

In fact, if I may - Traction is a grand ponzi scheme - in that you borrow from the future, and hedge it against today. In that, not questioning, what is the value you are creating, and who's funding it, for REAL ?

As an individual, I strongly believe in discovering non-linear, compounding problems - than the commoditised "mee too versions", with traction. You eventually catch up big. We picked a hard market(B2B school segment) - but then, that is also the MOAT.

Simply put, if it easy to scale the company in 6 months for YOU, so must be for someone else with that kind of resources and common sense.

But we are not suicidal :)

For 2 months, we spent time talking, iterating, building mocks, re-building mocks with a simple goal - create the world most intelligent, but human centric technology with the users. With the few teacher led pilots we ran on ground, our UI intern often sent in sketches over What'sapp to the teachers we were working with. As a company, we are unlike anything you have seen co-creating with users.

We had to drop the purist approach to who wanted what problem to be solved, as there were multiple stakeholders, each with complementary, if not conflicting goals.

To our first customer, who remarked after the call "This app, this app is just way above the cut. Send me the Quotation!" - we even sent in a video describing how the assessment feature she really wanted would look like - and later ended up drafting a patent candidate for the same. That's how we work.

Customers are not things in excel sheets, meant to strike off and milk. And when you build something for them, it shows. This is the DNA at Shunya that our team gets the most thrashing at :)

But we have also done it wrong (..before we almost got it right)

As a first time entrepreneur, it is natural to have aggressive goals for yourself & team, and I have to admit that the "temptation of inverting" to an easier target group(TG) did occur. In fact we lost 3 weeks trying to sell our K12 school product to coaching institutes. Reflecting on it, reminded me of how we compare our journey, with what it should have been.

Putting a lens of product maturity, and the timelines, there was a dance of symphony, a just in time process of feedback & co-creation. The harder part, in all enterprise businesses comes with the baseline product.

In that your painkiller, not only needs to be more effective, but also, should have lesser withdrawal effects of the next best.

This is how we baselined Shunya's lead product with the other software's operationally deployed but not used. For example - we were amused at why both Google Classroom & Whatsapp co-existed in schools.

The key insight was, Google classroom was not being used by the student, but by the parent !!

And, you bet, parents had had enough in 2020 - to allow the kids to take pics of assignments and send over Whatsapp. An anti-pattern. Who wants to use LMS meant to be used by parents. ?

To someone looking in isolation, it would have meant a different inference, and hence building a wrong product. Lady luck, had it's day for Shunya.

Your startup batch can rest in garage. No one really cares and for right reasons

Infact, till I took the 7 day road trip, I hadn't even realised how "schools think", and how enterprise selling to this segment is different. I sat with their STEM initiatives(without kids, coz of COVID), looked through the quality control systems, back offices to support content, admin & IT support, looked at UI/UX of the home grown ERP systems, noticed "the desk calendars" at each of the school - in that understanding how brand presence & recall comes alive in traditional setups.

I think, till one absorbs, the persona of the target like a lived experience, its hard to create products for them.

When in offices, we asked, which ERP do they use, what do they use for fee collection etc.. to see how deeply embedded were the brand names. And the ones that were, well, we built our sales engine off that talent pool. It was as simple as that. The key realisation in hindsight was, people do not buy Software, they buy the salesman, who will problem solve for them. We spoke to folks, who were so embedded in the system, that they would get calls from the principals, totally unrelated to their core product.

And this is how we started to understand the fabric of the society, sales & the grography. And this doesn't show up on people's CV's, or any digital footprint - for that you really need to start from the geography, understand the school, their distinctive catchment areas and then work backwards with the talent in that area.

After this experience, most of our work was outwards in nature. In that it was "non-google", and more "human search engine" driven. We took time to form these connections, spoke to operational folks, across Consumer goods, telecommunications and traditional larger economies.

Anyone trying to build anything for Bharat 2.0, needs to go down to kneels, in trenches and learn from these networks, on ground. This will not happen with "Speed".

And, so your startup batch of fame, can rest in garage.

On weaning old products to drive adoption

In both the pilots, the key insight was not only how we drive the adoption, but also the weaning. In one of the pilots for example - we were glad that the Principal took a stance on "weaning from Google Classroom and What'sapp - and everyone onto Shunya" . We take this with humility and that motivates us to uppen our product game.

Key insights about why current Software in Ed sucks

The current ERP/other software offerings were so bad that they actually increased the work of teachers.

Took attendance in class, now come punch it in the ERP. Did grades in class - now come punch it to get e-report cards.

Really ? Who the f$$k has time for that kind of work duplication ? This is where the current software in Ed sucks.

Inverted goals, Really ?

We often think that Speed of building and scaling your customers are invented goals. But, value creation loops only derive from people closest to the problem and observing them in their most natural surroundings.

While a lot of companies, throw in money at Teacher training for their software - why plan to have training in the first place? Why not build something with first principles, mental models.

The intricacies of identifying the customer need & pain and crafting a solution shouldn't have to feel like a black box, something that you could either do, or not do. Customer interview should be less about selling, and more about discovery.

The last 3 months, we have gone so deep in customer trenches as a my team, looked at back office operations of schools, quality control mechanisms, aspirations, fears, and limitations of technology, that when a recent principal gave us feedback "So, basically this is a sophisticated version of whatsapp" - it was joyful. Every bit of how low touch , but adaptative technology should be, we want to excel at that. 

We believe in co-creation. We invent with them. Our three best features and 2 prospective patents that we are processing, are all led by Educators pushing us in ways where we dilute the boundaries of who defines the product roadmap. 

Customer obsession all the way, left , right & center - because it's your responsibility to innovate on their behalf. These are our value systems. 

On building the culture of customer POV - first principles - have only ONE rule.

When my team tells me, "...but it works on my phone" - I tell them only 1 rule - "your customers phones will be very different than yours " - and as a natural byproduct, we have created an Amazing culture where a lot of bad ideas get shot down because they don't meet the yardstick we would have for our customers.

It enables us to have these kind of conversations - as honestly as possible.

"Guys - I sent our first contract to the school , which is for XX lakh per annum. Think in the shoes of the customer. We are not going to ask our customers to pay for this trash. When we say Shunya is a no sugar water company, we mean every bit of it. Let's create our BEST work together".

With all these well placed insights from on-ground, we are well placed to enter what I call as phase 4 - a true test of our product thinking & evolution. Raring to go, for more!

More about us here