Hypotheses and MVPs

It's been a busy three weeks working on The Local Rocket. We realized that our business really has to cater to two groups, businesses and consumers. In that respect, we really have to validate that we have two problems: that people are unsure of their options for what to do when they want to go out, and that businesses are unsatisfied with their current marketing efforts. Over the past week we conducted a survey that posed the question to local residents of Harrisonburg:

On a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night, do you ever wonder; what all is going on around campus?  Around town?  What the local restaurant's deals are?  What prices/times are for happy hours at bars?  Where the parties are?  Am I paying too much here or missing out on something big across town? or the big question, Where can I get the best bang for my buck?

The overwhelming response was 'yes', with 84% of respondents agreeing that they have this problem. That gives us confirmation that there is a problem that our solution addresses.

We have yet to confirm that Harrisonburg businesses are unsatisfied with their marketing efforts, but we expect to hear back from them by next week. Assuming that businesses do have this problem, we think that we can provide them a solution. With an easy to use website that informs people of stuff to do, and allows businesses to reach these people and cater deals towards them.

Right now people hear about events and deals by word of mouth and social media outlets. Businesses currently throw money at ineffective paper ads that many people ignore or throw away. When people aren't sure of where they want to go, they don't run to their junk mail and look for deals. They ask friends and decide based on limited information.

We believe our solution is more effective in several ways. It gives people more options of things to do. It gives them a centralized place where they can find out what events and deals are going on locally. Instead of checking multiple sites, they can come to The Local Rocket and see all of the deals/events.
Our solution also helps businesses by giving them a more cost effective way to advertise. This is because they can target their advertisements better, as well as eliminate the cost of printing ads.

This past week, we launched our minimum viable product. The site allows people to add events and then the events show up on a map. In a very basic way, this help solve the problem because it allows people to see what things are going on around Harrisonburg. We're going to be adding features over this next week that will allow businesses to advertise on the site and will allow people to see the top events. We're going to keep pushing forward and iterating until we find something that really works.

We also discussed how advertising would work on this site. We started talking about rates that we could charge per thousand of viewers and how ads would be displayed.

We're hoping to bring about a lot of improvements by next week and be able to start really getting the word out about the site and sharing it. Stay tuned!