Presentation during The Lean Startup SXSW by Manuel Rosso, Food on the Table.

1. Concierge MVPLearning from early adopters at Food on the Table Manuel Rosso

2. Food on the Table helps families eat better and save money at the grocery store.

3. We combine your family’s food preferences with sales at your local grocery store to create a meal plan and organized grocery list How it Works Select your favorite grocery store Select what your family enjoys eating Build a meal plan based on your preferred ingredients that are on sale at your favorite store Go shopping with a super organized grocery list Prepare our chef curated recipes in no more than 45 minutes

4. Why Concierge MVP? If you can't get them to adopt your idea with high-touch, face-to-face service, they sure as hell are not going to buy into your cold web page. At the SLLC I told the story of user #1 This is the story of users #2 to #20.

5. Finding the first 20 users Leveraged relationships built in early discovery. Identified mavens. Asked them to recommend candidates. Reached out to our own networks. Defined general user profile but kept it flexible. Do you feed your family? Do you want help? You are in! Not in a position to deny interested prospects. Our hypothesis was very likely wrong. Approached candidates with an open mind Learned about their problem and how they solved it. Introduced our solution after knowing we could help them.

6. Learn First, Code Last 1st Interaction Face to face, Out of the office. Learned how they solved the problem on their own. Verbally positioned our solution as it would look like on the web but rapidly iterated based on reaction. 2nd Interaction Phone conversation. Emulated the web experience through questions but clarified when necessary. Delivered recipes and grocery list through email. Further Interactions Attempted to make it as autonomous as possible. Focused on the experience, not code. Used Google Apps as proxy for “dynamic” web pages.

8. Get over your vision and think simple Abandoning the complexity of the large vision allowed us to focus on what really mattered… …How are we going to solve their problem!

9. What we learned Don’t try to learn it all at once, break it into small steps. (store selection, recipe selection, etc…) Move on to the next step when you can anticipate what your early adopters are going to say before they say it. Automate when you are spending most of your time doing repetitive tasks that slow down your learning. If your currency is learning, only code when it will make learning cheaper.