The next stage of validation requires putting a meaningful first version of a product out that people could use.

Building ScalePeak - Validating product idea - Journey so far

While it looks deceptively simple to read about, validating product ideas is a challenge every time you do it. 🙂 Documenting our journey so far in validating our startup idea.

As Shashi spoke about it here https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shashishekhars_running-roll-the-dice-a-small-online-business-activity-7153654673344761856-eC-5 , we both strongly felt that the problem small businesses have in effectively presenting products online is worth attempting to solve using technology. We wanted to see if others felt the same before we jumped into building solutions. So, we started chatting with different folks:

1. Friends and Acquaintances in Online Selling: We talked to people in our circle selling stuff online – like sarees, organic foods, and kids’ toys. They had one thing in common – they were doing okay but weren’t scaling up, mostly because their manual ways didn’t support growth. They liked the idea of a website or selling on platforms like Amazon but didn’t have the time or know-how, and hiring a pro was too pricey. Plus, managing orders and catalogs through WhatsApp was eating up their time.
2. People We Didn’t Know (Yet): We reached out cold – via emails and at trade shows. Met a jeweler in Delhi trying to take his family business online and an arts and crafts seller. Their stories were about trying to grow but getting stuck with cumbersome updates to multiple places, managing product assets, having better SEO etc.
3. Folks in Bigger E-commerce Companies: A friend leading sales at one of these companies and another running a service business for online sellers. From these conversations we inferred that while the larger businesses were depending on services firms to help them, smaller ones making up a big chunk of the long tail of online sellers in India weren’t helped by existing offerings as they were either expensive or complex for their business.

While these conversations were certainly encouraging, the next stage of validation requires putting a meaningful first version of a product out that people could use. So we set out to build the first version of ScalePeak focusing on a few usecases that we sensed were key. This version will be out early February.

For the next step of our validation, we need help from you – especially if you’re running a small business selling things online. We would like to invite you to an early access program and your input could help shape ScalePeak really work for people like you.