Is There A Problem To Solve?

Lockdown startup part 2. 

In the last post we talked through the basic area that we wanted to explore:

When people ask someone else for professional advice, over a coffee or video call, the receiver gets a huge amount of value (￡X,000), the giver loses very little (an hour of time). This creates a huge value surplus, which is an opportunity. 

We don’t know much about this area though, so we need to understand how it works. This will tell us if any problems exist that we could build something to solve.

We want to answer questions like:

• Do people ask for advice often?
• How do people choose who to ask for advice, and find them?
• How do advice-givers choose who to help? 
• Do they charge? If so, how?

At this stage, I had in mind the idea of micro-consulting: companies paying to speak to experts for an hour. It’s not great to have an idea already in mind before talking to people, but it was there and I couldn’t really help it ??

So we made a list of people we wanted to talk to

When people ask me for advice, it’s normally because I worked at Deliveroo and TransferWise. People know and respect those companies, which they use as a proxy that I know what I'm talking about (sometimes accurately, sometimes not).

We made a list of those really great companies in London, and the people that used to work there. We wanted to talk to ex-employees over current employees, because we figured HR might block current employees from consulting.

If current employees told us “no way”, we’d just go to ex-employees. If ex-employees told us “no way”, we’d stop. So, in the interest of finding out if this will fail as quickly as possible, we went to ex-employees.

We made a list of people that used to be in great London-based companies like Monzo, GoCardless, Deliveroo, TransferWise, Revolut, Bloom & Wild, Attest etc. This would help us understand supply of the marketplace, and we’d look at understanding demand later on. We looked for people that had at least a few years at those companies, and ideally in mid/senior roles.

We messaged people on LinkedIn and Twitter that we wanted to pick their brains about a startup we were thinking of exploring. We were clear that we weren’t selling anything, we just wanted to learn from them. About 80% agreed to chat to us, which was a lovely starting point.

The calls ??

Our main objective was to learn if supply existed (were people willing to give advice in return for money?), and if demand existed (were people willing to give money in return for advice?).

We didn’t pitch them the idea of micro-consulting, we asked them questions instead. When you pitch people, they’re inclined to say “great idea” and generally make you feel good, because that’s how humans work.

We asked them when the last time was they gave people professional advice (if ever). We asked them how the people found them, if they charged, how they scheduled calls, all that. This would tell us if they had problems we could solve. If they weren’t willing to give professional advice already, that probably wouldn’t change in future.

After speaking to 18 people that we saw as “perfect supply”, we learned the following insights:

• They all had been asked for advice; some frequently (multiple times per week), others less so
• They all enjoyed helping people
• All felt that their time was valuable, and wanted to charge if they could
• Many were willing to help certain groups for free (charity / students / underrepresented groups)
• Some people were open to long-term consulting/advisory projects, others weren’t
• All were concerned with making sure they could actually help people, before charging
• Twitter and LinkedIn were the main ways that people contacted them

??????

So there’s something there. We don’t know how big, but we know there’s something.

People are willing to give advice, and they’re willing to charge. 

Let’s prove demand!

Thaaaat was a lot harder. 

I made the mistake of trying to prove that our “1 hour consulting” idea had legs. No one had really mentioned the one hour consulting as something they actively looked for. But it was the idea I had in my head, and I pushed it.

We contacted a few people that we thought might need advice from the people we’d spoken to - no takers ?

We figured companies might need advice about how to handle People issues related to Coronavirus. So we put a post out offering the help of the several great HR people we spoke to when validating supply - no takers ? 

I was starting to think this idea might not go anywhere, when I had a minor epiphany.

We had validated demand, just not the demand I was looking for.

These advisors we spoke to were frequently getting asked for advice. Sometimes by the wrong people, some of whom wouldn’t pay, but the market did exist. It’s already flowing, just using channels and tools that aren’t built for it.

Bingo ???

It’s not a huge leap to say that if people are getting a lot of value from something, they’d probably be willing to pay for it. 

And if the people we spoke to were getting unsolicited requests, there could be a lot more people needing advice that aren’t as plucky.

It’s not super concrete, but it’s enough to tell us that we should build something to learn more. To paraphrase someone smart that gave me advice for this: if you think there’s something there, build it and let people show you how they want to use it.

So that’s what we’ve started doing. We see the broad problem as one of discovery.

People giving advice wanted to be found by the right people - either people that would pay, or people that they’d be willing to help for free. And people needing advice were shooting in the dark trying to find people that could help.

And if we can connect them, we can find a way to take a cut.

We’d build something with a few options of how to connect, so that the market could show us what it wanted.

But juuuuust before we dive headlong into that, we need to check that this marketplace could have a financial model that works. So that’s coming next, then we can get into the really fun stuff: designing and building.

Hope this is interesting - let me know if you have any feedback on our approach!

Graham

The response to my last post was so great. I’ve had a ton of messages from people wanting to be involved in some way, or giving advice. It’s all super useful, so please keep it coming. If I haven't replied to you yet, you're next on the list.