Binnj and Many new start ups that get it all wrong

The biggest challenge that Binnj faces is the absence of an elaborate market research to generate significantly deep insight about the restaurant business industry that can be the game winner in this case.

Without that insight, and I will elaborate on the kind of insights, creating a business model canvas is tough. What Binnj has is a concept board, where they think that they have an idea and are now in the process of field testing the conceptual product.

I agree, that lean-startups adopt this model, but now that they have invested so much time into the development of the product, I think it’s time they explored how they will come up with their value proposition, their positioning, identify and segment customers, identify the Minimum Viable Product and the Minimum Viable Segment and work towards an acquisition and retention strategy.

For example, if I were to ask them questions such as, how big your market is, and how much are you looking to capture in how much time, these questions would perhaps not earn me quantifiable responses.

Also, one crucial piece that is missing is the financial viability of the product. Without knowing how much the service would cost to design, build, implement, sell, maintain, enhance and earn revenue from, investing too much time in product development does not make sense.

The case only mentions two broad segments, the ERG, and the SMERG clusters. I do not think they have broken down and identified these restaurant chains by location, and come up with a specific plan to acquire those customers. For example, if I were to ask Mr. Hutcherson, who is your customer and why is he your customer, the response I am anticipating, based on the case is an abstract one. Not a specific answer, such as “I intend to target A, B and C restaurants in this location, because they will pay, they do not need to spend a lot to try the product, they can easily adopt this kind of a solution to their existing practices, and that they will perhaps help me leverage their acquisition into future acquisitions.”

I agree prototyping is important, but the hundred day sprint could have been an ill-conceived plan given that the work really requires the business development team members to generate key insights.

I believe that they should sit and work out finances first, to explore the possibility of working out how much the business is worth and how much it will cost to develop. This to me is a significant step. More so because everyone on the current team has other day jobs, therefore, prioritizing and executing tasks becomes a key strategic issue.

The second step would be to generate insight into the restaurant business. Currently they have identified inventory management systems, a standard restaurant menu and lack of opportunity to selectively price items, as some of the pain points. But what if, for example, the clients of the restaurant want the waiter to service them personally and not want to order via an app? Then in that case their solution would fail to take off on a scale that they might have imagined it to take off on. In this case, coming up with a low cost, intuitive and smart application for inventory management might be a more viable solution than a digitized menu.

Third, they ought to clearly map the pain point of the restaurant industry and then come up with a list of features on the app that would solve each key pain point. The next action item would be to list down, on the basis of priority, the features that cut through the segments and those that are specific to one given segment.

Fourth, they should then look at the potential competitors. At this moment, they have identified a few, but that is again based on limited insight. What would be crucial in defining the competitor landscape is the kind of details their research can generate. This would help in coming up with a more focused MVP.

The next step would be to then focus on prioritizing key features of the prototype that can be taken to the field to test and demo to clients. To me, they have failed to identify those particular pain points clearly and subsequently translate them to priority items to their developers.

The next step would be to identify the go-to-market strategy. Currently no one in the team is talking about it. They seem to be building on a direct sales approach, but that limits visibility and adoption, more so because the product might not be “buzz-able” in its current state. Questions such as, how does Binnj look to educate potential customers about the features and benefits of the app, and how does Binnj plan to generate sales-leads through connecting with the elements in the restaurant business, haven’t been explored.

A direct sale is a costly proposition. More so in a B2B product because the typical acquisition costs go up owing to highly diffused landscapes.

Identifying one’s client’s customers and positioning oneself strategically with the client’s value chain is an important element that is missing in this case.

For example, if I am just a fancy, flashy restaurant menu app that runs on the iPad, and my client restaurant adopts it, but the restaurant’s patrons ditch the idea because one of the regulars likes the waiters, they will perhaps not adopt the idea in the long run. What then about the restaurants that doesn’t have such waiting services? Will they know that such a solution exists? Will the sales team be able to reach them?

The agile methodology of developing a product makes sense if they have all these things identified at either the start, or has a strategy in place to iteratively identify such insights in quick time and get product prototypes.

I feel adopting and proceeding with the guidelines mentioned above, would help the team chart a more definite path to take the product towards execution.