Test tube

When I started at Launchpad, bp’s business builder, it was like joining a new club where people spoke a different language. Phrases and terms I’d never heard, let alone used in all my time at bp: lean, moat, traction, product-market fit. But by far the one I heard most was “experiment”.

Launchpad itself was an experiment for bp, all the startups we were building were experiments, the code, the customer interactions, the channels, the way we described ourselves on the website. All experiments.

Corporates don’t do experiments. They make decisions and they execute. Experiments are for scientists. In labs. Away from real business.

Of course, even corporates have cottoned on to the idea that failure promotes learning. And without a high degree of tolerance for failure, people won’t innovate, they won’t challenge the status quo, they won’t learn.

2021 is my year of experimentation

It’s a grand title for succumbing to my natural tendency to spin too many plates, start things but not completer-finish them, follow my butterfly mind etc.

I began the year as Chief Home Schooler and have been experimenting with the roles of Founder, Blogger, Coach, Mentor, Employee, Consultant, Adviser (I was made redundant from the home schooling gig).

Each one is an experiment to see if it ‘clicks’, whether it fits with my purpose and inner flywheel, as well as the killer question, can it make money. Even a bit.

The other thing about experiments is they are fun.

Validation

Experiments are the modern way to test a business idea, especially to validate pain points and whether your product solves them. They follow the “scientific method” – observation, question, define hypothesis, get data, draw insight, define new hypothesis.

By far and away the best book on the subject is Strategyzer’s Testing Business Ideas.  I love how it describes itself as “a field guide for rapid experimentation”. With over 40 different types of Discovery and Validation experiments from expert interviews to card sorting, boomerang and search trend analysis; so much inspiration beyond the dull online survey.

For Familiarize, I have been running experiments for months now testing hypotheses about customer discovery for startups - is the pain acute enough?

I have learnt a lot: yes the pain is acute, it’s often one of those lie-awake-at-3am pains.

But it’s also one that’s easily put aside, because speaking to real customers is uncomfortable and there’s always a dozen fires to fight each day.

I’ve been working with Founders who love the concept, want the help but seem to lose energy. And so I’ve run experiments using simple interviews to understand why. This is all leading to me focus in on the sweet spot for Familiarize.

But here’s where I don’t practise what I preach. Experiments need to be structured, with a clear goal, what success looks like and doesn’t look like and a time-frame. And ideally they are run in sequence, progressively, each one building on the last.

I’ve fallen into the Founder trap of housing all my customer insight in my head. Surrounded by a whole load of cognitive biases that I also caution Founders against.

Discipline

I really enjoyed experiments in science as a kid. But I hated the documentation. All that method, apparatus, expected results stuff. I just wanted to get my hands dirty.

But it’s discipline we need when we’re building new businesses. Without the discipline we can build the wrong products and start marketing to the wrong people with the wrong messages.

Other problems I’ve found with Founders, including myself, is that unless you write things down:

1. you test too many things at once (poor focus)

2. you keep testing things you’ve already validated (particularly when you don’t like the outcome!)

Experiments help us use our time wisely and productively. Systematically, rather than haphazardly. In pursuit of learning something. It works for the big stuff and the small.

Here’s some tips I’ve found useful:

1. Write down what you don’t know – the gaps in your understanding. It could be something about your customer – or yourself. Flip the gaps so they become hypotheses, e.g. “Can I make money solving Problem Y for a Founder?” to “I believe that Founders will pay more than £X to solve Problem Y”.

2. Buy yourself a notebook - an Experiment Log – to store your hypotheses. Add a new page for each experiment you’re running and when you feel you’ve done enough validation, mark the page validated (positively or negatively) and what the next step is. Then you won’t keep opening up the same question. The Strategyzer book has some great test cards to inspire.

3. Apply the right level of rigour for your stage – in the early days if five people all make the same point, that might be enough to proceed to your next stage. Before you invest £50K you might want more validation.

4. Think of experimentation as a decision tree moving from left to right, a non-linear line which increases in weight as you get closer to “Truth”. This concept has lived in my head for the past year, but I have bought a flipchart pad to produce it this week - I’ll show it on my Instagram

5. Apply the scientific method elsewhere in your life. See everything you do as an experiment – an opportunity to learn and adjust: a new running route, a bit of software to try out, a phrase or some language in the heat of an argument, delphinium cuttings (might just be just me?).

My new found fascination with experiments has had a profound impact.  It’s liberated me in fact from feeling a sense of panic about this year.

It’s helping me with my business ideas, as well as with how I’m handling this year. And I believe it’s helping me outside all of this too: with my family – seeing all my interactions with them as mini experiments. Not least learning how to navigate the pitfalls of bringing up teenagers.

The Forbes household is one giant petri dish.