Hey there, thanks for coming! This week I started customer development efforts. The goal is to talk to people that could benefit from using SquidGPT, and understand what problems it could help them solve. That should translate into improvements and new features in the app, which will turn it into a product people actually find helpful.

Also, big announcement this week: I got accepted into Antler’s April Paris cohort.

Today’s show:

  • 🅰️Joining Antler
  • 🙋First customer development efforts
  • 🏛️Getting on the Slack app Marketplace
  • 🗿Personal update: How’s it going, Stefan?
  • ➡️Next steps

🅰️Joining Antler

Antler is an early stage VC investor that runs a 10-week founder-matching program. By the end of these 10 weeks, I hope to have found a co-founder, developed an idea together and secured a seed investment (🤞). Exciting!!!

Joining Antler means I would change paths, from bootstrapped solopreneurship to VC-funded startup.

The downside:

  • Having investors has similar connotations to having a boss
  • Having co-founders means sharing ownership, and comes with incompatibility risks

The upside:

  • Leverage
    • 1+1= more than 2: Two compatible people working together can achieve more than the sum of what they can achieve alone
    • Investors and peers in the program drastically increase my support network
    • Investors can help open doors: more investors, clients, etc.)
    • The potential to build something bigger and more impactful: instead of leveraging just my time, I would be leveraging invested capital + my time
  • It’s more fun to build something together than alone
  • Connecting with amazing people

The program is starting on April 17. Until then, I’ll push SquidGPT as much as possible. In the program, I will most likely explore ideas other than SquidGPT. In case Antler invests, SquidGPT will become a fun side project. If not, I’ll be back at it in July.

🙋First customer development efforts

Always when starting a new thing, the hardest part is getting over procrastination (for me). The unknown can be scary. Especially when that means reaching out to strangers, asking them for things. However, once I start doing the doing gets easier.

This week I began reaching out to people to talk about problems SquidGPT could help solve. Here’s my process:

  1. Define the customer profile
  2. Reach out to people that fit the profile
  3. Talk to the ones that pick up the (proverbial) phone
  4. Synthesize and make 🦑 better

1. Define customer profile

I’m starting from the hypothesis that people that could benefit most from SquidGPT work in small to medium sized companies, often write slides for their jobs and use Slack. That narrows down the customer profile to:

  • Job title (in order of probable relevance)
    • {Business/Biz/Product/Sales/Support/Revenue} + {Operations/Strategy} + {Associate/Manager/Director/Head of/Lead/Owner}
    • Chief of Staff
    • Managing director
    • Founder/CEO
  • Company size:
    • 50-500 (big enough to need structured communication, small enough to buy indie slack apps)
  • Industries (Took a breakdown of slack users by industry from G2):
    • Computer Software
    • Information Technology and Services
    • Marketing and Advertising
    • Finance

If you found this blog after I reached out, know that there’s more to this than just a process. I’m genuinely interested in talking to you and helping you solve your problems. If you happen to fit this profile, please reach out to me

2. Reach out to people that fit the profile

Using a templated message can be a bit impersonal, but saves tons of time. Here’s a message that I’m currently trying out:

Hi [],

I noticed that you work []. I'm trying to understand the challenges faced by [] folks, both in general in their day-to-day work and particularly related to ideation and structured communication. 

I'm not looking to sell you anything or pitch my product. Rather, by understanding the problems you face, I hope to develop a helpful solution. 

Would you be open to a quick 15-minute call to share your insights? You can schedule one at []

Kind regards,

[]

3. Talk to the ones that pick up the (proverbial) phone

So far I sent 50 connection requests, got 30 connections, had 1 call. While the conversation was interesting, it was hard to get into the details - customer profile was slightly off. For the call, I wrote up an interview guide, but since it’s shorthand, I won’t be sharing it here. Happy to share it in private. My learning is that I should build more rapport at the start of the conversation, rather than jumping into the meat right away.

Next, I’ll be reaching out to >250 more and following up on those first messages. At the current rate, that means something like 10 real conversations.

4. Synthesize and make 🦑 better

Hopefully, I’ll learn about users problems and understand if SquidGPT + improvements can help solve those. Hopefully more on this soon

🏛️Getting on the Slack app Marketplace

Since I’ll be joining Antler mid-April, I don’t want to leave SquidGPT in the vacuum. That’s why I’m starting to get the app ready to be released on the Slack app Marketplace.

The things I need to do are mostly writing copy (e.g. short description, long description), covering some bases on security & privacy (privacy policy, implementing some best practices), and adding an onboarding flow to the app. Alex, maker of Truffle has been super helpful with tips and tricks here. If you need a Slack bot that can answer questions based on your existing Slack conversations - try Truffle.

While I’m at it, I’ll try to sneak in a few improvements I already have in mind for SquidGPT: upgrading to ChatGPT (OpenAI released this to the public), adding a persistent context that can be added to your questions (write once, use anytime), to personalize answers, and some ways to follow up on the questions (e.g. dig deeper, improve answer, More!)

🗿Personal update: How’s it going, Stefan?

🗼More people visiting this weekend. It’s always nice to walk around Paris with the eyes of a tourist. This time we went to the Louvre - it’s so big, I got lost a few times.

🥂The coming weekend I’m hosting an end-of-season party with the crew from my improv class!

🏃Also, went on an unexpected 15k run - good start for marathon training. As I was going out for my morning 5k, I forgot the keys inside. Had to go pick up the spares.

➡️Next steps

March is the month of customer development. Here’s what I plan to do:

  • Reach out 250 people/Run >10 customer interviews by end of March.
  • Start getting the app ready for submission to the marketplace