Tyler Prochnow (from left), Debra Ellies and Bo Fishback headlined Kansas City’s first Entrepreneurs Unpluggd event, held on Nov. 15. Photos from KauffmanFdn on Flickr.
Last week, we checked in with Tim Jahn and Stella Fayman of Entrepreneurs Unpluggd before they traveled to Kansas City to put on their first event in the Silicon Prairie. The theme for the event, which was held Nov. 15 at Screenland Crown Center and featured Bo Fishback of Zaarly, Tyler Prochnow of Think Big Partners and Debra Ellies of OsteoGeneX, was a discussion about each speaker’s experience acquiring first customers. The diverse background of the speakers produced a wide range of observations.
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Bo Fishback
Fishback made a disclaimer about the somewhat unusual circumstances surrounding Zaarly, a company that launched at Startup Weekend Los Angeles. “My experience might be irrelevant to like 90 percent of you,” he said. “Our circumstances were pretty unique.”
On the impact of press
“We got a front page article on the (Wall Street Journal), and we could only attribute like 12 users to it,” Fishback said. He noted that while press obviously didn’t drive users, it does discourage people that are thinking about competing in your space. He noted that it also generates investor interest. “It makes the world of investors look like sheep,” Fishback said.
On the metrics of customer acquisition
“Our first attempt at getting users it was $40 a user,” he said, noting how completely unsustainable that was. “We went from $40 a user to $3 or $4 a user in a matter of 35 days … because we put something out there and iterated on it.”
On how Zaarly approached customer acquisition
“When we started we had like 200 experiments and we just started knocking them off,” Fishback said. He added that, while the Zaarly team didn’t know what they were doing, they started to figure things out because they were methodical.
On leveraging app stores
“Our developers thought we got hacked because there were so many new users,” Fishback said. “No, we got featured [in the Android app store] again. If you build something awesome and you wonder why they are featuring that stupid thing, it’s because they don’t know about you.”
Screenland Crown Center played host to the region’s first Entrepreneurs Unpluggd event. Photo from KauffmanFdn on Flickr.
Tyler Prochnow
Prochnow, who previously worked as an attorney, started by discussing how he got into the entrepreneurial world. “I quit my job on the day I made partner,” he said. While representing a client after he went out on his own, Prochnow said he “asked the dumb question, ‘Why doesn’t Kansas City have an arena football franchise?’ And before I knew it, I was the owner of the KC AFL franchise.”
On getting customers to love your product
“I don’t think there is a better way to get customers to fall in love with your product,” Prochnow said, “than to know what is in their heart.”
On what he looks for in entrepreneurs
“Are they the right people to go out and sell (their vision) to people so they fall in love with it?” Prochnow asked. “It’s only bad to fail if you don’t learn from it.”
Debra Ellies
Ellies noted that her company, which is developing medicine, faces vastly different challenges than software businesses. In her case, acquiring her first customers is something that looks more like clinical trials.
On what she learned in school and research
“I learned that you have to find a problem in society that you are going to fix, and until you do you keep on with your path in life,” Ellies said.
On starting the company in Kansas City
“I wasn’t sure if Kansas City was the right place for this opportunity,” Ellies said. “After Pipeline, I realized we had the regulatory experts here, and, really, it was better to have the business here because the costs were lower.”
On raising money
Ellies encouraged people to look at government grants. “We have raised $5 million,” she noted, “and 70 percent of it has come from grants.”
