Example Reflection - Learning Launch

Challenge & Selection    I’m a founder of a small company in the Ed-tech space in India. We help students,

especially from tier-2 & 3 colleges and cities, to explore various careers and get

mentorship to reach their aspirations by connecting them with young professionals from

various job functions and industries. These young professionals are mentors to those

students, and we connect mentors with mentees over a mobile app, where students ask

mentors about their careers and can make an informed career decision after having a

good knowledge of various career opportunities. In addition to the mobile app, we planned

to launch seminars and skill training workshops hosted by the mentors, giving students

face-to-face attention and assuming this to be our unique value proposition in the market.    We were ready to launch our prototype mobile app and the challenge was not only to test

the idea, but also to decide what should be our launch and marketing strategy. And to

know the truth and collect meaningful data, we opted for the ‘Learning Launch’ tool of

Design Thinking.    Application & Insight    First thing was to decide about the launch strategy, and then see whether students are

signing up on our platform and see the general user behaviour.    There were majorly two options- invest in online marketing and market our product

throughout India through facebook, instagram and other social platforms. ​The other option

was offline marketing- launching our product by hosting seminars in tier-2-3 universities.

Since along with testing the idea, we also wanted to test the validity of our unique value

proposition, we decided to go with the later approach. Also, talks with a number of

students before the product launch also backed the idea of launching through seminars,

but we want to actually test the whole scene. We conducted several seminars over the

next few days and collected the data. We realized that we were able to convert more than

40% of the audience in seminars into our users and at much less cost than we would incur

through online marketing channels. It also tested our assumption that in today’s world

where there are a number of online mentorship and skill enhancement platforms, there are

a number of students who still prefer face-to-face attention, confirming the value of our

unique value proposition.    Second, in the next 6-7 weeks, we were having an organic growth of ~12% weekly and a

four week retention rate of 32%. This tested our idea and gave us motivation that we are

really solving the unarticulated and unmet need of the customer.    Though there were also some disconfirming facts, telling us which features in the mobile

app are of less importance and which are totally useless. We observed the data we

collected in the ‘Learning Launch’ phase and crafted the strategy for the next phase

accordingly. Abiding by the Design Thinking’s Learning Launch principle of getting the

truth fast and cheaply, we saved a lot of unwanted cost by defining the time-frame of the

testing and by opting the data centric approach, which created less conflicts among

stakeholders and drove them over a fact-based journey.    Approach    An alternate approach to solve the problem was to invest in both marketing approaches

simultaneously and compare the results. But that would cost us not only in terms of money

but also quite a lot of time. We could have been doing things based upon what we liked or

not, without any time-frame and structure. I believe ‘Learning Launch’ tool has helped us to

solve problems structurally and in a given time-frame. Time is the most valuable thing for

an entrepreneur, and the Design Thinking approach has surely helped me and my team to

save a lot of that and invest that saved time in implementing further strategies.    Now we test the little features we add in our mobile app with ‘Learning Launch’ tool, which

prompts us to keep experimenting fast and cheaply unless we hit the intersection zone of

customer wow, execution wow and the business model wow.

