 I realize that I'm probably standing in between the lunch session and the last session of the morning. So I hope I think everyone can bear with me for half an hour. I promise not to bore you with a bunch of slides. In fact, it'll be a lot of fun. So what I'm going to talk about is some huge fan of Prezi. So let me see if I can get it up. And there are a few problems with the network connection right now, say one sec. OK. So what I'm going to talk about basically is some of the lean startup concepts and how we can get them into action. So I'm going to use, so this is an experience report of one of the things that I have tried last year based on some of the lean startup concepts. And we're going to see it in action on how some of these things worked out or maybe did not work out for us. So overuse term, minimum viable product. I think if all of you have gone through some of the lean startup concepts, everyone has heard about it and everyone has their own understanding of what minimum viable product is. So I also have my own definition of minimum viable product. So my definition is very simple, that it is more about validating the potential in your idea without writing a single line of code. Does that sound surprising? Is that easy to do? Just validate the idea potential without writing single line of code. So in short, we want to validate the value or growth hypothesis first before you start writing a bunch of code and then spend months and months building something. So that's where I think a lot of us cannot connect to it because this is a big, big statement. So I just wanted to take an example of Dollar Shave Club. How many of us have heard of Dollar Shave Club? OK, one. So unfortunately, I think the net is not working. Let me see if it loads. OK, I think it's not liking us today. So anyways, the basic idea for Dollar Shave Club was that the guy actually started with a very simple video of actually describing his idea without building anything. So Dollar Shave Club, as the name stands, it's basically the idea was that you can buy your razors for dollar a month, the shaving razors, which are pretty expensive. So the idea was very radical that we will provide you the razors at your doorstep without you having to go and buy them. And again, they are very cheap, they're safe, and the very interesting video. So just look it up later on, dollarshaveclub.com. And so the surprising thing about this was that a lot of people actually asked me whether I think of this as a gimmick, because you can actually publish a video and say that we can basically get the validation. But it's not a gimmick. Why? Because the guy actually had so many page views on their website the first day that it couldn't handle the traffic, and it went down. It was so viral. More than 5,000 people signed up for the services in first few days just because of the video. It was so powerful. And then as we speak, I think there are 13 million plus people who have actually watched this video on YouTube. So it's very powerful. I think all of us should, and Michael Dubin is going to love me, because if it worked today, there would have been, I think, 2,000 hits more to that video. But quite unfortunate. Anyway, so I just wanted to set this at the back of your mind before we start with the experience report that I wanted to share. That things like this, I think some of you must have heard about the Dropbox story as well. So Dropbox also did something very similar that Drew Howard actually started with his own video on his laptop on describing what Dropbox would do for you. And then it went so viral that in the first few days it had 75,000 plus sign ups. So with this, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Nikhil Joshi. And I work with Pubmatic right now, which is a seller-side platform for programmatic buying. This is just a snapshot that I've taken from my Visify bio. Here you'll see the link, thevisify.com, which basically connects all your social network and then give you some of the highlights. So I think that's good enough. I do agile coaching and program management for Pubmatic. I'm based out of Pune. With this, what we are going to cover, I just wanted to set the ground. And this is going to be another 20 minutes from now. So we're going to look at the experience report of Natirang. So Natirang is basically the venture that we tried out last year. And natirang.in was the website which actually converted some of those things. So we are going to go through the journey of Natirang. We are going to talk about, I think, some of the concepts from lean startups. But it is going to be more around how you apply those techniques and the concepts and less around what those concepts are. And then we are going to look at a bunch of tools which would help you validate some of the early learnings and assumptions in the process. Where did it actually start? So the birth of the big idea, that's me in the corner if you can't recognize. So I'm a huge theater enthusiast. And I do a bunch of shows in Marathi theaters. So Marathi is the local language spoken in Maharashtra. And from my college days, I've been actively participating in a lot of theaters and shows. So last year, when I came back after spending a few couple of years in London, there was that aspiration again to get back into the industry. So then I started looking that, are there any shows happening around me? Can I actually go and start participating somewhere? Or maybe can I just go and buy tickets for some of the shows? And that's where it struck. So there's an event run by the startup center. How many of us have heard of the IN50Rs event? Great, few hands up. So IN50Rs is basically a forum where IN50Rs, you actually have to take your idea from being just an idea to a working prototype. So the goal of the whole event is that you validate your idea during those 50 hours. So and it's run by the startup center. You can look them up. They have a bunch of events going on in a variety of cities, I think, every month. So the idea is very simple, that we want to have Natarang, which is a platform for Marathi theater enthusiast. So in the process, we also started defining what Natarang would be. So for enthusiast, it's going to be a platform where they can discover what's happening around them. So people who are just casually interested in the theater industry, they can just go and have a look at this platform where they can maybe get shows, summary, and reviews, and stuff like that. For producers or the production houses who are working with the theaters, this platform would enable them to know which shows to host. Because I think this is one thing to note. This is a very niche industry and a very closely coupled. So what I mean is really people are not so broad minded in terms of technology, awareness, and stuff like that. So even if you have to break through into the industry, you really have to go through your contacts. There's no forum. It's not like Book My Show. I think all of us have heard about Book My Show. And the very first question I was asked was that, is this Book My Show? So one of the proposition is basically Book My Show for theaters, and which is in the local market. And the most important, which was something that I was just talking about, is for the artist, it's going to be a platform where they can discover new opportunities, where they can actually act, right? And also connect with fellow artists, right? I think typical way of doing things, so we obviously had all of the experience I'm going to share is mostly from that 50 hours of the idea inception. And then I'll just give you a snapshot of where we stand today. But where we started is basically, you know, we, so I used to work with ThoughtWorks at that point. And the only model I knew at that point was this, that we work with few business people, we work with few customers. And then we take our idea from being just an idea to some working software during the whole process of continuous improvement and continuous delivery, right? So that's the agile way of doing things, right? So, and again, that was some of the things that I learned while at ThoughtWorks. So we were looking for an alternative because this is not something that we wanted to build for months, we wanted to get something out very quickly. And in that process, we define few principles of what we are looking for, right? So the very first thing I was looking for is that it should be very lightweight because only two of us going to do everything. So we don't want a lot of processes and, you know, tracking overhead and stuff like that. It should be scientific enough to give us real data. So it should be data-driven. It should be low cost, obviously, because we were doing it for an event, we had no investment plan at all when we started. It should be obviously with minimum efforts and in fact, to be very specific, it should be with minimum dev efforts because my background is more from business analysis and product management. So I don't code actively, but one of my friend used to code. But again, he was limited by his own capabilities and that's why we wanted to keep the development efforts to the minimum. And the last one, I think it's hard to see. It's highly influenced by the real customer feedback, right? So because this is so interactive and collaborative, we wanted to have everything validated at every point as we built. So what we found is basically the lean startup, right? And again, the roots of lean startup actually go back into the Deming Cycle. So how many of us have heard of the Deming Cycle? Most of us, right? So it's a very sort of familiar circle. I think a lot of speakers actually talked about it in last few days, that we plan something, we do just enough, we check on what we have done and then we learn from that and change the course of action, right? So that's where the roots were. But the lean startup hipsters, as I call them, they actually have defined a better way of doing things, which is, you know, you build something, you measure whatever you have built and then you learn from it. In that process, the blue boxes that you see are just the outcomes, right? So you build on your idea, the product gets measured and then the data that you have measured, you can actually start learning from it, right? So moving on to the very first tool that I wanted to talk about was the lean canvas, right? I think people who attended Ash Mourir's session yesterday, they've actually started creating lean canvas for one of the ideas. So that was our starting point, right? So we started defining our lean canvas and what are the problems that we are trying to solve, right? So I actually had three problems that I wanted to solve, and no prioritization done so far. We were just trying to list down what this platform would do. So for the enthusiasm is going to be, again, as I said, ability to discover popular theater shows around me for producers or the production houses. They're going to know the most profitable shows to host at a particular venue, right? Does that sound interesting? Because if I'm production house, there's no way for me to know whether this show would give me maximum returns. And for the fellow artist, it's going to be a platform where they can discover opportunities and maybe go for auditions and stuff like that. And then in the process, we also started talking about how the cost structure would look like, what will be various revenue streams, what will be the specific USBs for different customer segments, right? So the very first tool I wanted to bring out is this that I think we spent hardly two or three hours brainstorming on what we really need, but had a rough idea of what the platform is going to look like, right? Moving on, so I think all of us talk about this, that we should start with validating the riskiest assumptions first. How, right? Does that actually mean building a platform and then putting in front of the customer? I think it's even simpler than that. The assumption we had was that enthusiasts would like to discover the shows happening around them and purchase tickets online, right? So I think the biggest assumption, right? Because if this fails, the whole thing is going to basically come down, right? So how did we start validating that? Is basically set up a Facebook page to describe who we are. So very simple and powerful stuff. So Facebook page for Natarang, it's still live for people who want to check it out, which just had a link to the Iojak platform. So how many of us have heard of Iojak? Okay, so now it's called Xplara, but what essentially it is is basically a ticketing system, right? So you can just set up an event and have people purchase tickets for those events. So the setup was so simple that I had an event. So this was the show that was happening at a particular venue. And there was this link for get tickets, right? Which was actually pointing to the Iojak page, where you can just go and purchase tickets, right? So within minutes, we had actually started, you know, actually making an impact and saying that if you are interested in actually visiting the show, just go and purchase the tickets here, right? So I think a lot of people from what we started observing was that they were not so comfortable with the idea of using platform like Facebook, right? Because they were like, obviously, I don't trust these guys, right? Where is my money going? I haven't heard of Iojak, I haven't heard of Facebook, right? So what do we do? So how many of us have heard of Launch Rock? Anyone? Okay, great. So Launch Rock is the best tool, I think, out there. So it lets you set up your landing page or launching soon page in minutes. So what you really have to do is just go to Launch Rock, specify what you are trying to do, and have a USP defined, which was this. So natterang.launchrock.com was live in minutes. What it was is basically discover great Marathi shows around you, reserve your tickets online, and you get a free doorstep delivery within 24 hours, right? So the landing page was live, and people actually started registering interest in this. So if I'm excited about those two lines, I'll just go K in my data and say, keep me posted, right? So whenever you guys make some progress, let me know. What you started doing is actually started building the audience even before you have your MVP, right? So that was, I think, another learning for us, that having this Launch Rock page, I think, helped us to start generating the momentum in the idea, right? I just wanted to put this in that in the last 10 years, I think the major change that has happened is that the development cost has gone down because of so many platforms and tools being available for cheap and free trials, stuff like that. But the access to customer data has gone up tremendously, because we have so many social networks that you can actually start using them to actually reach out to people, right? So data is our fuel, and then we started observing the data on just these three pages, right? So the very first page was the Facebook page, where actually Facebook gives you really detailed insights. I think I would suggest everyone to create just a dummy page, and I think it's like if you have more than 30 likes, you can start observing the analytics on that page. The second page was actually the analytics from IoJoc or the Explorer website, where we actually had a count of how many people are visiting the buy ticket page, and how many people are really converting them to actual purchases, right? And then there was Launch Rock, which was generating sign-ups even before there was MVP. So I think by this time, we were all set that we had confidence that if we put something in front of the people, they will actually check it out, right? So time to define the minimum viable product, right? So the MVP for us was very simple. It was built on top of Shopify. How many people know about Shopify? Great. So Shopify is basically another platform which would let you set up the checkout in minutes, right? So if you have category of products that you wanted to start selling, you can just go to Shopify, set up your web store, and have those products configured. You can start buying them, right? So the Natterang MVP was a web store set up on Shopify to enable ticket purchase. Now, obviously this is the simplest thing that you can do. So we wanted to have something more to it, right? That something more was this, that if you purchase even a single ticket, we will give you free access to current upcoming show reviews and then open opportunity section, right? Which was just a very simple blog where me and few of my friends started blogging about few of the current shows and upcoming shows and provided few sort of insights on what's happening in this, right? So more like movie reviews that we see. And then there was also that opportunity section. So how did we get those opportunities up on the website is because we had a close contact in the industry. So we had few people with whom I have worked with and few of my friends have worked with. So they actually provided some of those open opportunities saying that I am going to do the show in next three months but I need this type of characters, right? So the opportunities and upcoming shows reviews is going to be free if you purchase even one ticket. So that was the sort of USB. At the start, we started working with only three shows at different venues because obviously we wanted to know are there specific genres of shows that people are interested in? Are there specific areas where people would go and purchase tickets? What are the type of, what's the age group of people who are visiting us? And stuff like that. So and also we had these, I think, couple of bullets which were, so obviously Shopify is not matured enough to give you seat selection and stuff like that. So if you are imagining book my show, you wouldn't have the ability to actually purchase a particular ticket but this was the guarantee that you will get the seat in the first five rows, right? Why? Because then we obviously worked out, you know, with the theater venues directly that can you keep these five rows for us? When at the moment we have a confirmation, we'll get the ticket physically from your venue and deliver it to the person who ever has ordered. So it was, you know, win for them because they get more sell through this online channel. They have nothing at the present. So that was the MVP. Now I think MVP started generating a lot of things for us. So Shopify also started giving us a lot of analytics and what we were actually interested in at that point was that who is behind all of this movement, right? So who is doing it right now? Because we see like 500 page views on a particular show but who is doing it, right? And the way to know that is case metrics. So for those of you who don't know case metrics, it basically is another platform or tool which would let you, you know, basically discover who's doing action on your website. So that's their tagline that Google Analytics tells you what's happening but case metrics tells you who's doing it. So they basically provide you a lot of data around the users, the behavior of the user and stuff like that. It also provides you an ability to set up funnel reporting, cohort analysis and stuff like that. It's a free tool for first 14 days. So we took advantage of that. That in 50 hours, we don't want to make any investment. So we will just go ahead and set it up for free tool, right? And then started a lot, you know, observing the data. So what did we learn from case metrics is this, that it was primarily used for knowing who's visiting the pages and what they're up to. We had roughly 50 visitors who added shows to the shopping cart in first 12 hours. So the 12 hours are the inception of the idea. You're not talking about from the time we set up case metrics or Shopify. It was since we started with that Facebook page, there were already 50 people who added shows to their shopping cart, but none of them actually bought it. So there was zero conversion, so that's why the sad face. It also sort of uncovered another thing that there are 25 people who actually referred shows to a friend. So that means that there was already traction. People were talking about it. The movement was viral, right? So great. Now I think it was a point that we start reaching out to specific audience segments. So saying that, can we go and look at people who have interest in theaters instead of reaching out to the open audience, right? So AYTM is another platform which you guys can use. It's called Ask Your Target Market, right? So AYTM provides you an ability to reach out to specific customer segments based on their demographics, interests, and stuff like that. So it's again free if you use your own list, meaning it basically works on surveys. So I can create my own survey and go and publish that survey in the open market. Or I can ask AYTM to reach out to the specific people who have those interests, right? So we obviously took the free version that we created our own survey, but the advantage for us was that we could reach out to 10 million people who are on AYTM, right? So actually get more data around that. What we learned from AYTM is this because the primary surveys that we sent out were around actually show genres, so which sort of show genres people would prefer. The preferred locations and the delivery mechanism. So how would you like to have your ticket delivered? Is that like physical ticket? Do you want a mobile ticket? Do you want just like an email or what is it that would get you excited? Surprisingly 32 people out of 150 reached out to the surveys in first 12 hours. So this was a big, big win because I usually hate surveys. I never take any of the surveys, right? So having those 32 people who have actually given us a real feedback, that was I think the first win of using AYTM. The second one was it also resulted in surge in page views on the Shopify page because obviously if you're talking about Natterang.in, people would go and visit that, right? So it actually resulted in a lot of traction on the website. And then I think one of the things that in retrospect if I look back is basically we limited the surveys only to enthusiasts, right? So we actually did not reach out to the production houses and the theater venues. But then it was also I think great because for one of the value proposition that we outlined earlier, the enthusiast was validated with this. And the production houses and theater venues probably we still had to make a few contacts there, right? Now, how do I start reaching out to people who are on my website, right? So I'm looking at the page and get their feedback. So I wanted to have a mechanism where I can just go and chat with people who are looking at that page right now. So snapping gauge is basically another platform or tool which would let you chat with the real audience on your website. So I think most of us have seen this on a lot of shopping platforms that there's a pop-up that comes up if you're visiting. It says that you need any help, right? Some sort of that. And there's again, so very easy integration with snapping gauge on the Shopify page that we have built. So no custom development so far, right? We were just looking at people who are visiting and then we can just go and actively reach out to them, ask a few detailed questions on, you know, what are they liking so far? What are they not liking from the current setup? And then again, it's a free tool for 14 days. So we took advantage of that. So no investment so far, right? It gives you a lot of detailed visitor logs and it gives you reports based on, you know, so activity by agent. So agent basically means person who is chatting, right? So few of my friends actually volunteered to be the agents, right? So they said that, okay, I'll also help you gather feedback from real people. So in a nutshell, here were the results in 50 hours event. So in the first 50 hours of the inception of the idea, here were the results, right? So we started with this Facebook page which had 98 likes, 596 people reached and four conversions. So conversions in this case, where people who clicked on the Ayuzhak link or the Explorer link from Facebook, right? Launch Rock had five signups, 43 page views and then six shares. So signups were really people who wanted to know more about the platform. And then obviously I think the biggest win was Shopify which had 432 page views and five conversions. So five people actually bought tickets in first 50 hours, right? So if you can see the summary, total cost to implement, zero, right? We haven't spent a single penny. Time spent was 50 hours, revenue we generated 1500 rupees out of which I think 250 rupees was our profit, right? So moving on the summary, right? So fast forward we kept the same model going on for first three months because we still were not sure whether it has real potential that we can build a platform now and actually have people visit it. So in first three months, Facebook was actually getting really viral. So people were talking about it, people were raising polls, questions, stuff like that. So more than 5,000 people reached 170 likes. Shopify was also doing great because it was more than 3,000 page views on different shows. Then we had good relationship with the three different theater venues in Pune. So we actually had people come to us and say that can we print natterung.in as the online partner on our ticket itself so that people can just buy at their own convenience. So it was great, right? And then they were roughly more than 40 conversions. So 40 people in first three months bought tickets using this platform. So total cost to implement again was zero, revenue roughly 8K, and then the validated learnings were priceless, right? Because we knew that there is interest. We knew that people actually wanted this platform. So now is the time actually we can go and build something. So as we stand, we operated this platform, I think from April of last year, so April 2013 to June, July. And then after that, we're still sort of in this stealth mode of working the whole grounds up platform with few people. So with that, I think I just wanted to summarize what are your takeaways from this session. And the very first takeaway is that you should start validating your hypothesis and not dissolution, right? This makes sense. I think you need to be a developer to get started on this idea. So this was my biggest fear when I started with lean startup concepts, that do I need to actually code something and build a website before I start with my idea? No, you don't, because there are plenty of tools available out there which can help you get started, right? So I think most of the tools you've seen, they were free of cost for first two weeks, right? Gather insights, not just data. So I think reading the data is not important, but how do you infer that data and actually make sense of the data is more important. So I think that's what we also learned. And I just want to say that the lean startup concepts are more like principles, right? So they're not rules, that if you want to do a startup, here are five rules that you should follow. There are no rules. So I think feel free to pick up what you like from those concepts and experiment with them. And then take the first step, I would just say that, just go and start with the approach that I've just said. Have like 50 different launcher of pages. Let people start registering interest in your idea even before you create something. So with that, any questions, anything? Comments. What users can do who don't want to turn over all their information from Facebook and others to advertising and be marketed to, and if there's an online tool and mass Facebook and other stuff that would do that? I think we, from what we captured in the initial days, there was no concern from in terms of sharing that information on multiple. Is that your question? So if I am liking your page on Facebook, am I bothered with sharing that data on multiple platforms? Is that the question? I want to create an account on TripAdvisor. I join by Facebook and then I give all my, my and my friends contacts to TripAdvisor that creates much more ease for marketing and profitability. But it also creates the potential for private corporations to influence thought patterns and culture of individuals who may not want to be influenced enough. So I think this, the example and the industry that we were talking about is more of like creative heads. So they don't really care about all of these things. So they really want to show their talent. They want to go and act in various stuff. They're not tech savvy. So they don't care about data privacy and stuff like that. So no, none of, none of the people actually said that we are not really, you know, sure of whether, whether to share the data on your platform or not. So yeah, so that was, I think, all thumbs up there. Exactly. So in fact, the production houses loved it because they were actually tapping the potential of Facebook to reach out to various people. And they, they were excited that the platform, even before they knew about it, had say more than 200 likes and people were talking about a bunch of things. So the production houses and I think the artists, they really enjoyed the platform. What else? Let's explore a tool, etc. I think it was all mid-based. So as in when we learned something, we were actually having a problem that we wanted to solve next. And then we started looking out for a bunch of tools. So the sequence that I've just highlighted is the exact sequence that we used it, right, in, right? So. If the data, if the data from the data is correct, so that's why I'm saying that. You know, once we had that Shopify platform, then only you can go and start you, you know, learning about who's visiting the pages. So Kissmetrics will actually work on top of Shopify or any other platform that you have set up for that matter. LaunchRock, for example, is the first thing that you can start with because it gets the attention from people, right? Even before you have a web page. So, so exactly the same platform, the, the sequence that we used, which I highlighted. Mm-hmm, correct, correct. So I think it was only possible because I already used to work with that industry. So I used my own contacts to reach out to the, the key people and establish those relationships uptrend. I don't think so. So if you, for example, if you skip through everything and you directly start with Kissmetrics on top of some marketing website that you already have set up, I don't think it will affect the statistics. So, so what we wanted to get really is answers to few key questions, right? So for example, when I had a lot of page views, I wanted to understand who, who's doing it because just having 5,000 page views doesn't actually mean anything to me, right? So, so that's where we took help from Kissmetrics, right? So, so that's why I'm saying that the analytics will not matter if you are using the tool for the right reason. So the security concerns and all this, and we are using the free tools, so do you look at all before I agree whatever is there, terms and conditions? No, no. That's the fear I think we overcome like in the first hour itself that we don't care about all of this. I think it's, it's more about validation of that idea. Right now, Natarang is in stealth. So there's nobody who can sue us actually for whatever we've done. But I think it's a sort of, you know, interesting thing to think about once you've validated your idea. So once you know that your idea has potential and you want to build something from scratch, this will be a, I think, valid question. So you're marketing it, or? Yeah. I'm only based on that. I need, that's the thing you won't have to scrap it in might be later. Exactly. So I think the approach we have taken is that we've used all of the free tools that most of them were throwaways, right? So we knew that from day one that we are not going to have Shopify as the final thing. Once we get into, you know, the big market. Yes. Yeah. Great. Great. All right. Thank you guys. Yeah.