AI SaaS
Fascinated by startups who are developing custom models as growth solutions for industries, I consulted a Maryland-backed AI startup on their platform-based AI services for manufacturers. My mission? Helping them focus and prioritize their product and platform development on high-value goals, develop new partnerships, and data contacts that would further feed and develop their model.
Product Feature Prioritization
Going into the startup on the first day, I saw and felt a major desire among the 7-person team to build and advance their product. Aligning the product to not only internal expertise, but customer feedback, was critical for product development. Also, the strategic considerations of what was actually driving the startup towards successful fundraising, sales, and growth was also important to organize and focus the team on. Through end user design, I repositioned their extensive Monday.com around the GOST method, and restructured the weekly team meeting to report against the highest priority goals, not just the tactical actions that had been historically happening. This created a shift towards high-value business development, data collection, and sales that impacted KPI’s that would attract partnerships and engage investors — drawing the team away from the idea that they had to immediately go sell their product, and bringing them close to the reality that sales were just one KPI, and other metrics would also define their success.
Fundraising Positioning
After reviewing their fundraising deck, I noticed that the team needed a stronger definition and identity of the value they were bringing to the market. Their deck called out some of their approaches and philosophies, but tended to use buzz words or new ideas that weren’t defined or explained. To better connect with investors, we aligned the deck towards their value propositions, differentiators, and current position to demonstrate their opportunity for providing AI services within a high-growth industry. In turn, the updated deck was presented to a major data services and massive manufacturing company, leading to new partnership opportunities who requested detailed customization for collaborative growth.
Partnership Development for End User Design
By looking across the market, we identified a list of potential partnership that aligned directly with the program portfolio of feature development and product offerings. In order to test the market on AI product features, we begin to position future product demonstrations to attract and white-label through already developed capabilities. Leveraging our list of future clients, we beta-tested partnered capabilities to learn about future clients’ needs, which drove end-user stories that we analyzed the market value of. Those high-value needs from current clients, tested through white-labeled partners, became high-priority goals on Monday.com. From there, we developed the goals into projects with clear objectives for measurement, strategies for development, and tactics for action lists. Team meetings and RACI and milestones helped to divide and conquer the actions and support forward progress towards valuable execution. In the end, through partnerships, the startup was able to understand the high-value needs of the market through existing, early forms of services within their platform’s offerings, test them, gain feedback, and align real market demand and need with the design and features of their current product development activities, ensuring they were building their future product in the right direction (major cost savings through early alignment of product to customer).