This is part two of a four-part story about building my own business and then closing it, told from an entrepreneur's and product manager's point of view. This part covers the journey from discovery to MVP.
As PMs we don't always get the chance — or the pleasure — of being part of a product's ideation team. Sometimes not even the discovery team. When we're finally brought into the loop it can feel like we missed the fun part, and that we're missing data points that emerged along the way.
In this case, because it was my own business, I got to lead the entire lifecycle from ideation to end-of-life.
Discovery
I started with friends and family. Around the end of 2011 and start of 2012, I invited close friends and family members to an evening, free, and asked them for honest feedback.
Then I asked those same people to invite their close friends to another session — this time not free, but at cost. Now I was gathering feedback from paying customers.
I also travelled to visit cattle breeders in Israel, to decide who I wanted to work with based on breed and raising conditions. And I visited meat disassembly plants and slaughterhouses, to understand how things are actually done and to become properly competent.
Then it was time to set the vision, the strategy, and the MVP. You can probably see where this is going.
The vision
Roughly forty people filling every event, asking questions about the cuts and courses, relaxing, unwinding, and meeting new people just before the weekend. Which is why these events ran on Thursday evenings only.
The to-do strategy
Become a pillar of the Facebook meat groups and communities by giving away advice from what I'd accumulated. Set up a website so people could find me through Google. Set up a Facebook business page. And word of mouth.
One more strategic channel presented itself when I was invited to co-found a Facebook group focused on smoking, barbecue and grilling. I was the subject matter expert on the founding team, and the community grew by the day on the strength of the knowledge shared there. It was not yet-another-Instagram group; it focused on delivering content and value to members. It is now the largest group in Israel on the subject, at around 70,000 members. I'm no longer involved — I moved on to the next thing.
The not-to-do strategy
The things you must not do, in order to hold your vision and goals. In this case: no salads, no side dishes, no drinks. My Hebrew slogan for it translated to "we don't do salads."
The MVP
Every point in the blueprint, in place. Plus a couple of meat suppliers I could trust, who understood I was only interested in high-end supply and that nothing else would do.
It also included a registration list built on trust: participants paid a fixed, predetermined, publicly known price on the evening itself, in cash. No credit card taken, none needed.
Once all of that was in place I launched formally, around 2012 to 2013 — and set off the meat-smoker and "meat nights" trends that have thrived in the Israeli market ever since.