We went against an industry giant, and here’s what we learned

Photo credit: Pixabay.

In November 2015, I received a job application for a co-founder post from a Chinese-Malaysian chap named Pei, a graduate from the Imperial College and University College London and a straight-A student.

I run a venture builder called LaunchPad, and Pei got cracking by bouncing ideas off the team. He worked on one venture, a restaurant menu on mobile phones called Menyoo.

Menyoo seemed a bit too obvious, a bit too good to be true. But these early signs were good, so Pei brought in two more co-founders—Nicholas, a guy that knows how to sell ice to Eskimos, and Aku, an old buddy of mine who works remotely from London as CTO.

As weeks went by, we realized that getting users to engage with our product was extremely challenging and that the problem we were solving wasn’t acute enough.

Provide a solution that consumers will go out of their way to use

You need to provide a solution to a compelling problem, a solution that consumers will be willing to not only pay for but also go out of their way to use.

We developed a loyalty app within Menyoo and it was getting far higher engagement. So, we started mulling on pivoting to a loyalty app, but Pei reckoned that a simple substitute to a physical loyalty card wouldn’t cut it. We would need to monetize customer data to make it work, so we ran a test with one of our retailers.

We sent 354 text messages to customers who hadn’t returned to the retailer for more than 60 days. The cost of the text messages was about US$8. The number of customers who went back to the retailer due to the text messages was 16. The total revenue generated for the retailer, then, was around US$107. Ka-ching!

We did a few more trials and then we pivoted. Menyoo was dead. Long live Mulah.

The way Mulah works is simple. Over-the-counter retailers stick an iPad next to the counter, and customers can tap in their mobile number to claim loyalty rewards.

Stay lean and keep going

Stay lean and keep moving, learning, and pivoting.

In July 2016, we were beta testing the app with a handful of retailers and we got some bad news. We found out that a gorilla is coming to town—and he’s teamed up with King Kong.

Fight using your assets to your advantage

Hustle harder

‘Know thyself and know thy enemy.’

Believe in the power of localization