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To learn from the best, I follow several blogs written by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors (check them out on the right column). It is a remarkable learning exercise to read about their experience at the cutting edge of the highest technologies. From them I first heard about Customer Development, Lean Startup, Business Model Generation and a few other key concepts that I believe apply as well to social enterprises. It is amazing to witness the creation of a start-up discipline and set of tools and I can’t wait for that wave to hit the social enterprise space.
But there are still a few differences when working at the BOP that make the transposition of these toolsets a hard effort. First, getting your hands on usable information is much harder. Not only there is almost no market research, the target customers can be suspicious and obtaining feedback efficiently from them is also difficult (by the way, this is a blessing in disguise: our data products will have a lot more value!).
Second, the speed of customer acquisition is vastly different. For the new wave of web and mobile start-ups, all they need to convert customers is in place: broadband, computers, smartphones… That allows for overnight hits and millions of new users per month. In contrast, as we try to bring business tools to the BOP we face a tiny installed base of smartphones, problems procuring them and expensive mobile data plans. Luckily the smartphone revolution is already picking up speed even in developing markets and this problem will solve itself nicely (there are for instance more than 20 Android models in Mexico today!).
A third big difference lies in the value of the solution brought to the customer and her perception of it. Since they come from far behind in terms of productivity and access to IT tools, the users have a hard time assessing value, which makes sales hard. On the bright side, leapfrogging a shopkeeper from medieval accounting practices to 21st century ones can greatly benefit her operation and also her self-esteem.
Of course, helping an underserved customer group like the shopkeepers is the whole reason we launched Frogtek. Despite the difficulties of bringing hi-tech products to an unsuspecting BOP, we are rewarded by slow but constant progress and are encouraged by the vast potential lying ahead. And as I like to say, if it were easy it wouldn’t be fun!
