In the last couple of weeks I ran various experiments. One per week, to speed up my insight generation with regard to TECH talents. It definitely works! Most of the time.
Reminders:
This is my quick monthly update via which I’m sharing back with you - the people helping and interacting with me - what I’m learning and how my startup journey is progressing
Don’t like it? There is an easy unsubscribe button somewhere ;)
Overview Experiments:
#1 - Interviews: Talk to 15-20 more TECH talents via reaching out through my LinkedIn network & beyond.
#2 - Search Analysis: Better understand how google analytics and trends can help me identify relevant topics. After all, if people are searching for something there is already some “confirmed need”.
#3 - Launch Website: launch a website, decide for a domain-name to start aggregating content on my research area and have a “mini-platform” from which to run online experiments towards talents
#4 - Launch Talent Facing Tools: build some low-grade prototypes to address pains that are relevant to TECH talents track actual usage & engagement
Results Experiments:
Experiments 1, 3 and 4 worked out more or less on the timeline of one week. I setup the interviews (held them over next 2 weeks), launched sunsetsandwifi.io and an initial tool for TECH salary comparison.
Mojo Lost
Experiment 2 felt like an unproductive week. I learned google search & analytics but it’s not useful for me yet. My TECH talent interviews also didn’t give me what I wanted to hear. I learned interesting stuff about Japan, but I didn’t hear the “easy”, clear pain that people experience which I might solve. 😭
I then went back and forth questioning my own approach, which makes you feel even more unproductive. I’m tracking my own progress on a weekly basis to keep me honest. Here is what I wrote for that week:
Mojo Found
However, I came to the conclusion that it does make sense to build products and prototypes and test them. There is no other way to get better feedback from people than actual usage of something. And whatever I will do, I will need to keep engagement with TECH talents high, they are the ones in demand in this world.
As it was already Monday when I found said Mojo again, I hustled Monday + Tuesday actually working both days until late in the night. Those experiment deadlines work for me ;)
Then I decided on sunsetsandwifi.io via as a name for my talent-facing experiments. I got to search for good hosting, setting up wordpress, ssl certificates, wordpress themes and plug-ins and spending ca. 8h trying to get my burger menu NOT to have a purple background. Glorious.
In week 4 I launched my first tool + a longform article on good providers of salary data. You can compare your salary to the entire population in your country. For engineers and product managers you can also compare to other people in the same roles. Spoiler: You are richer than you think, but further away from the top earners than you think. Check the tool out here.
The hypotheses I was (am) testing were these:
People are interested in learning more about their salary, especially in comparison to others
People are willing to share highly private data like salaries
I can build, launch a workable tool that is “somehow automated” in a week
I launched exclusively via a LinkedIn post and more than 130 people used the tool within the first week. Including various people I have never interacted with before.
I take this as a semi-confirmed hypotheses. Most interesting is, that people are willing to provide salary data if respective value is provided and you treat privacy right. I got some additional ideas into this direction.
Overall, given my limited LinkedIn network and lack of promotion I feel this warrants a round of promotion (e.g. other social) at some point. Hey, and I built this thing in a week.
Key TECH Talent Insights
This is straight from my summary document for the interviews. I’m not sharing all the detail, but these are the broad strokes.
People are looking for "orientation” in a complex more VUCA world but it doesn’t feel like a “business-solvable” problem: people want to figure “their orientation problems” out themselves, they don’t need a full-time coach. Proof: many talents did not reach out to me after initial conversations, it is not a big enough pain to ask for external help.
TECH talents, especially experienced developers have a very nice position. They don’t need to join networks or other tools to find a job. They can open LinkedIn or any other tool and get 10-20 outreaches. They can then proceed however they want with it. Developers are also annoyed by this and not active on LinkedIn at all anymore.
Result: I am still looking for a potentially great value proposition. But I have not given up on the talents yet, I will put some more effort into the talent side. Both on content building, but also exploring specific business ideas. (Salary Benchmark, One Great Job in TECH a week, Standardized Screening…)
The idea of creating something that acquires all TECH talent rapidly, even at a cost is attractive. However, you need a relevant frequency of engagement (with whatever you are building) and for that you need a high gain (possible, but hard) or high pain (unlikely). I think a potential way forward is to keep running experiments on sunsetsandwifi.io from time to time regarding some topics, to see if there is “explosive growth/gain” hidden in some topics or approach —> I will keep doing this.
As I said last time this early stage startup-stuff is like a drunken walk. You run experiments, you learn, you aggregate learnings, come to conclusions and then start a new round of experiments. I have so many insights and ideas already which would easily be enough to build a convincing pitch-deck for investors based on various ideas, but I still feel like I need to - actually want to - do more validation first myself.
Up next:
Since I have not yet found a real, deep pain but suspect there might be some hidden “gain” that people don’t know yet they want - I will keep experimenting towards TECH talents. However, I’m now 8+ weeks in and at some point somebody needs to get paid. And there is only one group of people going to pay in this type of environment: the employers. So in the next update you will read about me reaching out to various companies, managers and recruitment professionals.
Until then.
Afterthought. It took me a while to decide on the providers for website etc. Here is the list, may it help somebody. These are just links, no commission or anything.
Domains: Namecheap
Hosting + Wordpress: Siteground
Wordpress Theme: Avada
Plug-Ins: Google Analytics, Yoast SEO, CookieYes | GDPR Cookie Consent, Email Address Encoder, Akismet