Ep 38: Family startup myAgeTechlab.com, part 3 - Product & Market Fit

Upside/Downside is a podcast about value creation and the strategies finance and business leaders can use to grow profits and cash flow.  I'm your host, Matt Cooley.

In our third episode about starting myAgeTechlab.com, produced by my teenage son and co-founder Liam, we delve into how we expect to find product and market fit.  Not easy in a new and fragmented business like AgeTech!  What do customers really want? Why should suppliers care about us?  Can we generate cash flow?

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Matt

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Welcome back, everyone. This is Matt Cooley, host of Upside Downside, where we explore value creation and how the actions we take in business direct profits and cash flow. I'm a unit CFO for a large tech company by day and a nerd for value creation and how it impacts companies and everyday people. This is the third episode in a series about our family startup that offers an age tech laboratory experience where customers will touch and learn about some very cool technologies that can help them live longer. Thank you. All right. So, Liam, I'm going to turn it over to you. All right. So, finding product market fit at the moment is a challenge. Despite there being, you know, lots of companies working on specific products, there aren't necessarily that many that are ready for demonstration in our lab experience yet. And in terms of the market and, like, you know, exactly what customers want, we don't really know for sure yet. We have also some primary research plus a lot of secondary research giving us an indication, but until we run several labs and get in-person feedback, we won't really know what kind of product market fit we have. And I just want to chime in there. Lots and lots of secondary research. We've read lots of reports, haven't we? Yeah, it's been pretty crazy, right? Lots of reports. And so today we will dive deep into this question and really find out what is going on under the surface. I want to start with a question for my dad. So dad, how do you analyze the consumer market in a space like H-Tech, which is still mostly underground? Yeah, so that definitely has been a challenge for us. It is underground, but there's also hundreds, if not over a thousand startups in this space and a lot of investment activity. But the thing is, a lot of these offerings and products and particularly gadgets, which is what we're kind of mostly interested in, aren't necessarily market ready. So we've had to go really wide and look at a lot of different sources to learn about this market. So, you know, we laughed about the reports a a short while ago, we follow bloggers, we're in a couple associations, and we certainly talk with a lot of the target market. So really, really going wide to collect information. That said, it's not really an established market. So it's hard to pull that information together, but that's what we're doing. So back to you, Liam, what challenges have you been facing this summer finding potential products to put in our lab. You know, I mean, as you've been talking about, like before, you know, finding the right product market fit has proved to be like one of the biggest challenges, I think, like over the summer. And due to some products, you know, being like medical or you have to buy them through like your health insurance, for example, we can't sell those as a company. So finding the right product. So we're not really set up to do that in our lab, right? Yeah, exactly. As we've envisioned it anyway. So finding the right product in the age tech space is kind of like finding like a needle in a haystack. But I mean, when we find something, you know, we can profit from it and, you know, we find something that's like really useful towards us. I think we can heavily benefit from that. So my next question is for Uncle Ed. So how can we effectively fuse the gadget in the home, making the consumer products part of the customer's everyday life? Thanks, Liam. Well, in my opinion, one of the best ways to bring the products in the home together would be effective sales in the aspect that understanding the products, as well as the consumer's needs to achieve the best fit possible. So as long as we can get with our customers understand their needs what they're looking for and what products we have available we can better understand how we can fit them together and hopefully unite them in something that's positive to help them out in their lives you know it's interesting ed because what you just said is with this business of ours and this this lab experience and having suppliers on one end and customers on the other and bringing together that's a lot to juggle especially with a pretty brand-new market like this with a lot of interest. So we're all going to have to get our clown skills going and learn how to juggle. I know how to juggle. I can teach everyone. All right. You're the juggle lead then. I'll tell you what. I'll throw you one of the bowling pins or something, Joel, and you can juggle it. I'll keep throwing them at you. Well, that's new territory. I just do fruit Oh, okay. Well, you didn't mention that to begin with. Yeah. Anyhow, so let me ask you this, Joel. In your opinion, how will in-person feedback and the feedback in general affect our product market fit plan? Well, I would say as feedback comes in from lab demonstrations and customer at-home experience with the products, the market fit plan will evolve, which this will direct us to the areas we'll focus on more or less with our products and in-person lab experience. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that sounds pretty good. Yeah, that sounds right. And we're just going to have to be on our toes and pivot as needed like any startup. So, yeah, I think that makes sense. Well, Matt, what do you think our first lab experience is going to be like? Well, I'm glad you asked. And I like to ask all of you guys, what do you think that lab experience should be like? And that happens to be the topic of our next episode. So, you know, we can wet some appetites here. But what do you guys think this lab experience needs to be like? Well, I mean, I'll go first. I'm obviously, you know, not going to spoil anything, but I think that the lab experience, you know, like it needs to be kind of like inclusive, like for everybody in like this space of like age tech. And it has to like, you know, prove effective to the range of people that we're like selling to, you know, and if it's not effective, we obviously have to go back to the drawing board and, you know, figure something out. But I think we have a very strong, good, like starting plan. So I think we won't really, run into that problem. I like that. I like that young attitude. What do you guys think? At least that's the positive attitude. I think definitely it should have a welcoming atmosphere, of course. Very knowledgeable staff is going to be very important. And Yeah, I hope we're knowledgeable by the time we get going. We should be after all these steps. That's a good point. And then the first lab is always going to be, it's almost like a test in a way, right? I mean, the first lab experience is, you know, obviously it's the first one. So since you've never done it before, it's kind of, you know, something that, you know, it's like, again, like a test, a test almost. Yeah. You know what? It's like the first pancake. It's the first pancake. cake you made. It's never quite, it's not like the other ones, right? A little rough around the edges, but we're going to have fun. All right. All right. Yeah. Turn it back to Liam here. Yeah. So thank you, Uncle Ed, Joel, and Dan for this discussion. And let us thank you to the listeners for listening to today's episode. And there was a lot to cover. Like, yeah, yeah, there's a lot to uncover today, you know, about the product market fit and some of the challenges we're working through to deliver value to the customers and create value for our startup. So I want to thank you for listening to Upside Downside. And in the next episode, we will share what kind of lab experience we're designing, as mentioned earlier. So see you next time. Bye. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Take care. Thank you.