The business: A platform that uses blockchain and token technology to help organisations with scalable governance
The Challenge: Our solid capabilities in the area of blockchain and token-based systems has great potential but is not commonly understood. Without a product to demonstrate it seemed hard to think we could sell the product using our expertise without the ability to show how it worked and enable prospects to consider us as a serious contender in systems development.
We had a great idea, but two problems: we needed a product to show and we did needed money to build it. Brian showed us that, by asking the right questions, we could find customers to replace investors. It worked. Our first customers paid for our solution to be built. And it started with asking the right questions.
We had a great idea. It was complex and it needed money. A lot of money. To sell our product we needed to have one. Catch-22!
We put together a pitch deck and were ready to start talking to investors. Or so we thought. My mentor, Shane suggested that we speak to Brian before embarking on marketing our product. I plucked up my courage and made the phone call.
Brian, I discovered is mild mannered, calm and polite. He made the call easy, so we met to review the pitch deck. I was amazed how quickly Brian understood the deep technology of blockchain-based and token-based organisations. He then presented his framework of ten pitch slides and targeted the areas where we were weak. He didn’t just tell us to go away and fix it. He gave us a range of strategies that could be used to resolve each of the issues identified and anticipated some that would be raised. He explained why each issue was so important to an Investor. It’s all about the psychology (wish I’d studied it now). At the time it just seemed like a lot of work but in hindsight I can see how much effort and time he saved us.
He didn’t just tell us to go away and fix it. He gave us a range of strategies that could be used to resolve each of the issues we had.
Our subsequent research caused us to pivot away from our original plan into one of providing scalable governance mechanisms for blockchain-based and token-based organisations. We confirmed that moving away from government organisations was the right thing to do and found our first client.
I shall never forget the meeting where Brian steered us away from a fee-for-service project style to a tiered SAAS model and suggested we dramatically increase our price. By more than ten times!
He made us look beyond our development bubble at what was happening in the marketplace. Brian pointed out, we had something unique that no-one else could do. Just finding a coder who understood this stuff was a challenge let alone someone who could do original development. That was powerful. We went ahead with the price increase and were successful. This meant we didn’t need to seek money from Investors. We’ve now delivered that project and we are finally implementing the SAAS model. This is a first for us as a start-up and it’s a very exciting time.
We went ahead with the price increase and were successful. This meant we didn’t need to seek money from Investors.
We are now positioned for a hyper growth phase where our primary objective is getting users on our platform. It is a new phase for us and now we’ve solved the problem of friction of adoption we are expecting things to move rapidly.
I recommend anyone with an idea to use Brian’s help as early in the evolution as possible to make the most of their time and money.
Getting Brian’s help has also provided other benefits that I did not anticipate. As a founder and CEO, Brian has helped me to manage my time better and be more confident in my decision making. This has enabled me to be more grounded when confronted with passionate, vocal stakeholders who might be missing critical information, or are blind sighted in one aspect or another. This is one area that has helped our development as an organisation.
I recommend anyone with an idea should seek to use Brian’s help as early in their evolution as possible. Especially if, like us, you like saving time and money. He also helps you understand what you don’t know. So often we are too close to see what experienced eyes see instantly, or in our case what Brian saw. Lean Commercialisation will enable you to get very clear about what you are doing, knowing exactly what you want to get out of it, at the highest fidelity possible.