This evening I went to Startup Grind meetup. My primary goal was to talk to people about TypeMe and get contacts with companies/individuals in customer care space. I did talk to 3-4 people, but none of them were excited about TypeMe. On the other hand, when I told them about Metromile, people were so psyched about it that they want to signup right there. This reaction along with Justin Kan’s (@justinkan) talk about building what customers want, made me rethink if TypeMe was indeed a good idea. The competition was between Tasterhood and TypeMe with Ramya’s excitement backing Tasterhood and my bad experiences with customer care backing TypeMe. One gentleman, who I met at this meetup, asked me to get user feedback for TypeMe through Facebook to vet the idea. Now, I wanted to do it for both TypeMe and Tasterhood to decide which one is better. All of this thought is running into my head when I’m walking towards Caltrain station. I didn’t trust my FB friends to give unbiased feedback, so I thought may be I should survey people eating at The Creamery. But Creamery was closed now. By this time I was crossing King St from Caltrain station towards Panera Bread when an idea struck me. Why not survey people who are crossing right next to me. This crosswalk takes 30seconds to cross, so that would be sufficient for people to tell me if they like the former or later. I sat in front of Panera and wrote the question I would ask people. Here is it:
What do you wish we had today?
An app that would send you invites to taste food from new restaurants that are opening up (or) An alternate to spelling out your name, credit card number etc to a customer service representative over phone?
I asked 6 random people near Panera-Caltrain area and they all chose Tasterhood hands down. People didn’t even understand what TypeMe was and how it would do anything for them. One person said he never uses Debit Cards.
** Vola, Tasterhood was born !! **
Ramya and I had a chat about how to do a MVP for Tasterhood. I will write more about it as we progress.