How I got to Lean Mindset thanks to Veronica Torras
Let’s go back to 2015, It’s incredible how much my beliefs have changed in few years.
At that time, I was working for some startups here in Barcelona, the easy way.
I was a Mobile Developer, in the middle of the Mobile World Congress boom, rounded by cool projects with some money to spend, in an international environment…
The typical scenario sounded like the following:
- They had an idea
- They asked to build A (typically a long list of A+B+C+…+Z)
- They had a budget of X
- I was working during 3–6 months
- I charged X + a very common deviation of at least another X (who’s in software development knows that is a lucky approximation)
- …moving on, until the next project…
I was a fast and very hard worker, so 9 over 10 projects released in a reasonable time.
..but…
None of them succeded, I had some money in my pockets, but 0 satisfaction.
One day then, a very smart girl, organizing events for a totally unknown group for me at that moment, came asking for help for a project.
I was an engineer, I had a tech education, I was used to doing requirements analysis, design, strict project planning & definitions, and so on… coming from old school waterfall engineering approach.
She came and said: “I need to validate this list of assumptions”
and showed me this circle
“I’m a strong believer of iterative lean approach”
What you can do in 2 weeks?
WHAT THE HECK? 2 weeks? Are you kidding me?
Her name is Veronica Torras,
the group she was organizing was “Lean Startup Circle” and her project at that time was “Womala”, soon renamed “bwom”.
Long story short: With this project, she came with a small pre-seed round of 100k and in less than one year she raised around 2 million to continue with her journey. Today she’s a serial entrepreneur with a good list of success and learnings on her path. *
* the amounts are not 100% exact for several reasons but mainly they have not been disclosed officially, and my memory is very poor. Take them as an order of magnitude.
But, let’s get back to my story, and what changed dramatically my way of thinking.
The lean startup method.
Veronica had no technical background, nor technical knowledge.
She was a solo entrepreneur.
She found a problem, and she had an idea to solve it.
Then she validated her idea with customer discovery and a very small prototype.
At that time I was not aware of the concept of MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
Not entering too much in detail, the project was related to Feminine health issues and pelvic floor exercises.
She created a Typeform questionnaire to cluster customers into 3 different groups for “light, medium, severe” pelvic floor issues, then she created 3 different mailing lists with exercises tailored for every group, delivered weekly by email.
The customer paid a week/month subscription to receive the exercises and the services provided tailored sessions with doctors for extra prices.
She came with 50k free users, 2500 subscribers, and a few doctor’s sessions booked.
She actually had a business validated and running.
The tools she used to build the entire process:
- A landing page to capture some potential customers
- A Typeform Questionaire
- A google sheet to “store” the users
- Mailchimp to manage 3 mailing lists
- Paypal button to pay the subscription.
- Everything connected “elegantly” with Zapier.
- Absolutely ZERO codings.
With this prototype, she proved a working model and generated trust to some investors that pushed her business to the next stage of validation.
Here’s when I came into play. I was totally fascinated by the process.
I started participating in Barcelona’s Lean Startup Circle events, reading about Lean mindset, customer discovery, idea validation, Problem-Solution fit, Product-Market fit, growth, scale, etc…
and I joined her with her iterative approach…
It took me some time to get used to constant uncertainty, but you know, it’s the Startup world.
Starting from there, I became maybe a worse developer, but for sure, a better learner.
And I started to see some cool results on the projects I’ve been working with.
(Goin: +8M, El Coco: from 0 to 50k users in 6 months, Daysk: ~300k, Iomob: ~1M , Olyseum: ~30M, ToBePet: ~600k, GetMassage: ~100k, CloudGuide..)
I cannot stop reading books and following smart people creating a better world.
I just want to thank you, Veronica, to be my first mentor and initiator in this startup world.
It’s always a pleasure to work with people like you, and I’m looking forward to meeting more and more in my life.
Please don’t blame me to put some romance in this story, but you know
I’m an emotional startup lover ❤.
(She’s still giving me some good advice from time to time, right now I’m reading a book she translated into Spanish “The Mum test” written by Rob Fitzpatrick the current organizer of Lean Startup Circle)
Thanks for reading me until the end, If you’re looking for some help for your startup idea, don’t hesitate to contact me.
