As a co-organizer of the Lean Startup Circle Boston, I’ve seen a few Lean Startup presentations. As you can imagine, Eric’s is one of the best. I won’t try to recap the salient points of the video in a blog post. Instead, I encourage you to actually take an hour and 47 minutes of your day or evening to watch this video from beginning to end. Sounds crazy, but trust me – it’s worth it.
The assembled crowd at Microsoft’s N.E.R.D. building consisted of roughly 1/2 lean startup “newbies” and 1/2 “experienced” lean startup practitioners. This made it a little interesting from Eric’s point of view. He needed to cover off the basics of the Lean Startup and Customer Development methodology so the new folks understood what the hell he was talking about, while also getting into some detailed topics and Q&A so that the others wouldn’t be bored. He did a great job.
Recently, I sat down with Michael Fruzzetti and Ben Dolgoff, co-founders of newly minted Peekaboo Mobile, an application for Apple mobile devices that uses your GPS location to send you deals and offers at retail stores nearby. By combining two ideas that have become hugely popular in 2010 – local coupons a la Groupon, and GPS-aware mobile applications, it’s no surprise that since their launch on the Apple App Store in early March, 2010, Peekaboo has quickly amassed 400 users of the service in the Boston area. More importantly – they’ve secured relationships with around 65 businesses such as Beacon Hill Athletic Club, The Good Life, and Boston Common Coffee, who use Peekaboo’s online coupon management system to post deals and offers directly to the Peekaboo community. As COO Dolgoff explains, “things like Groupon are a ‘thought-out buy.’ You need to be in front of your computer and make the purchase online. Peekaboo Mobile is all about ‘real time deals.’”
With backgrounds in Finance, the initial career path put Fruzzetti on Wall Street as a trader, before returning to Boston, reconnecting with fellow Suffolk grad Dolgoff and forming an umbrella company ByteVentures that they’ve used to create several internet business. Peekaboo Mobile is their 4th venture together.
They realize they’re under stiff competition from the many “Groupon-clones,” as well as New York-based Postabon, which recently secured a $1.05 million round from Spark Capital and has presence in Boston, New York, and San Francisco. But, the Peekaboo duo feel they have a strategic advantage when it comes to the competition – the thriving, vibrant, and helpful community that surrounds entrepreneurs here in Boston.
Currently housed in the entrepreneurial frat house HangOut Labs, and planning to secure angel or seed funding from one of the many startup competitions such as Mass Challenge, both Fruzzetti and Dolgoff are supremely optimistic on their future outlook, with plans to bring their currently offshore development team in-house, and expansion to other cities in the near future. As Dolgoff explains, “there really is a community here. People who actually want to help. We’ll expand to other cities, but our homebase will always be here in Boston.”
What do you think of a “real time deal” service on your mobile phone? Is this a service you’d use, and do you think it will affect buyer behavior when out shopping? Leave your opinion in the comments, below.
Posted in lean startups on March 28th, 2010 by Matthew – Comments Off
Last Thursday, I went down to the Boston Lean Startup Circle to listen to Austin and Cheryl from Pinyadda discuss their experience doing Customer Development. My colleague Matt Wiseley calls this going to “church for startups” – a place to reflect on the principles and methodologies that guide our everyday actions as entrepreneurs, with a like-minded community. It’s good for the soul.
Whether or not you’ve “got religion” when it comes to Lean Startups, here’s an interesting case study by a pair of folks from a local Boston startup that actually have been practicing the methodology for the past 9 months or so. Austin and Cheryl from Pinyadda.com share their experiences with Customer Development in the video below. Apologies in advance for the lousy camera work.
If you’re a local startup and interested in learning more about building your minimum viable product, or Customer Development, join us for our next meeting in April where Matt and I will be giving a case study on EditMe’s Customer Development experiences.
