Day 12 — What Business Are We In?
By: Bob Weishar
Tags: Startup Lessons, Founder Advice, Passion, Startup, Founders

Day 12 — What Business Are We In?

So, to summarize: You have a minuscule revenue stream, no cash reserves, and an albatross of a contract… You don’t seem to realize what business you’re in. You’re not in the burger business, you’re in the real estate business.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. For these past 2 years, we’ve made lots of effort at Invincible to solve the challenges of kids, families and schools for managing type 1 diabetes. Our Plan A has been to build a product (a mobile app) that consumers will pay us a monthly fee to use.

But 2 years in, and I’m wondering what business we’re in.

What are we good at?

The part the movie leaves out is that McDonalds could get into the real estate business because they were uniquely positioned to do so: rather than have franchisees struggle through the process of finding and leasing land, they could centralize the process and get really good at it, while letting franchises do what they do best: serve customers.

So what are we good at (or at least can become uniquely good at)?

We’re good at using DESIGN to make learning fun & accessible.

So far, the training content we’ve developed for our app uses fun, bite-sized lessons with lots of images to teach content. The source of the content isn’t novel — in fact, it’s all from standards of care from organizations such as the American Diabetes Association. But through our design, I believe we have the power to make this content accessible to a much broader population.

We’re good at building user-friendly MOBILE APPS

We deliver high-functioning mobile apps that solve user’s problems. We ensure our UX is accessible to a broad population, especially the youngest ones we want to serve.

We’re good at UNDERSTANDING our users

Talking to users is an evergreen part of our design process. While we’ve logged at least 100+ interviews so far, there’s always more to learn and improve.

What are our values?

No matter which path our testing takes us, I need a framework for evaluating potential opportunities. It starts with our values.

We exist to help kids with chronic health issues. There are lots of potential businesses we could go into, but we exist to help kids.

We put our end users first. Too often tech companies (especially in healthcare it seems) focus on the money and lose sight of the end users actually using the products. I’ve seen it firsthand with so many of the medical products I use, and it’s something we must constantly strive toward.

What are we not good at?

Just as important as our strengths are our weaknesses:

Content Expertise: We stand on the shoulders of giants. The healthcare personnel working every day to help families are the true experts. Distribution: Building a user base from the ground up is really hard! We’ve started to develop our social accounts, but we have a long way to go to truly reach scale.

Potential Businesses

There’s obviously a ton of possibilities here, and that’s the whole point of our lean canvas experimentation. But here are a few bets worth exploring.

1. Direct to Consumer App Business (DTC)

This is the business we’ve been in. And it’s really fun! I believe we would not have gotten as far as we have without starting with end users. It’s in our DNA. Building a product from the ground up with real end users gives us an immediate feedback loop into what works and what doesn’t and keeps our goals front and center.

But selling directly to families is also hard:

Asking a family to shell out more money on top of everything else they pay for (e.g., medication, doctor’s appointments, etc.) is a challenge. Building up a large user base without any marketing dollars isn’t easy.

DTC companies that inspire me

2. License App to Businesses (B2B Software as a Service)

What if rather than going directly to kids and families, we work to supply the tools (e.g., hospitals, med device / pharma companies, advocacy organizations, etc)?

B2B Companies that inspire me:

3. Business to Business to Consumer App (B2B2C)

In this scenario, we maintain Invincible’s branding, but businesses take advantage of our technology with end users. In this scenario, we retain a relationship with the end consumers while enabling companies to benefit from our service.

B2B2C Companies that Inspire Me

4. Other Possibilities

Content API

Data

Premium Content

Advertising

App Development

Affiliate / Channel Partner

Time to experiment

So What Business Are We In?

Well, still figuring out — and I think that’s the point.