Parts Of The Whole

The other day I met with a friend of mine, Bill Johnson, for a couple of beers. Bill is a Sr. Principal at 360 Architecture which specializes in sports complex architecture.

As we were talking he told me that he still likes to sketch on napkins but the “young guys” in his firm have some pretty cool new software tools available to them using parametrics. I hadn’t heard the term before so here is a description:

Parametric design links dimensions and variables to geometry in such a way that when the values change, the computer model automatically updates. This has been around in one form or another in various software packages. Everyone in the room knew about CATIA (for aerospace design), Maya (for animation) and SolidWorks (for engineering), but this is a unique parametric design software that has been designed for – and by – architectural designers. For the first time designers will be able to explore an algorithmic approach to architectural design that applies computational methods.

I asked for an example of its usefulness and he shared a story of a sports complex they were designing in Iraq. One of the constraints in their plan was the size of the construction beams which were limited by the size of delivery trucks. Instead of the stadium’s design driving the size of the beam, they specified the size of the beam which flexed the entire stadium’s design.

Rather than designing from the top down they can now design bottom up. Brilliant. He sounded as excited about this as those in the financial sector must have been with the introduction of VisiCalc.

Rube Goldberg: Accomplishing by complex means what seemingly could be done simply – Merriam-Webster

This all got me thinking about a video I had watched the night before. It was for OK Go’s song, This Too Shall Pass, and it featured a very entertaining Rube Goldberg machine with some very clever marketing for State Farm Insurance.

How do you go about constructing that? Does the designer have the entire machine from start to finish in his head? I don’t know but I’d guess that they build from the bottom up but with the end always in mind. Design components and test them in isolation. Begin to connect the components into small machines and test them. Practice. Then piece together the small machines until you have enough to form the whole.

In software we do the same thing. We start with the big picture but then work bottom up. We might have constraints such as infrastructure, 3rd party APIs, testability or just plain developer comprehension. We decompose, code, then assemble.

For some of us, the beauty lies in the various pieces we combine to build something greater.

But for most, the fans, the parents sharing a video with their children, or team members collaborating, they just want to be proud of their stadium, to watch a toy truck fire a paint cannon, and for their web apps to make life just a little easier.

The trick is to keep things as simple as they can be and hide the complexity when they can’t.

teamloop Customer Validation

Reading Steve Blank’s book, The Four Steps To The Epiphany, has convinced me of the importance of his advice of “getting out of the building” to validate that at launch we will have customers, sports team coaches, who will take out their wallets when they get to the Plans and Pricing page.

Whenever I have had the opportunity to bring up teamloop in conversations with coaches I go into my “casual, soft sell” to get some feedback. The responses are always positive but I needed to start the “focused, reality sell” and meet intentionally for talking through our solution with a coach. I invited a friend of mine, Robert, to meet me for some honest feedback. Robert coached my son for a couple of baseball seasons and continues to coach his son’s baseball and basketball teams.

I thought it was so appropriate that my first customer validation meeting was at a favorite local hangout, Coach’s Bar and Grill .

I gave the elevator pitch, talked through a typical workflow after account sign up, shared current pain points and our solution, and the benefits for the coach and the team.

Lessons learned

I need an actual elevator pitch–not a staircase story

Meeting with Robert was as much for validation as it was for practice for me. The more I tell our story the better I get at whittling it down to the parts that matter the most.

teamloop is going to solve real problems

I love it when I talk through examples of pain points and I see heads nodding in agreement and the small victories in their eyes when they realize that the management part of coaching doesn’t have to be a total chore.

Simple is a feature

Our working context for building teamloop has always been that it has to be simple. This is going to be a tool. Get in and get out as easily as possible.

One of the best insights came when we had a side conversation about how some similar tools offer access to recruiters to view player profiles and how we are NOT going to do that. He was searching for a phrase or some wording to give to me to communicate that our focus must be on simplifying the coach’s job but he couldn’t get it out so I just pointed at our tagline: “Simple team management for coaches. Better communication for everyone.” He said, “Yes, exactly”.

Still on course

After an hour or so, the verdict was in: He would pay for it and he would tell fellow coaches to sign up. Great news!

teamloop Gut Check

We ran an ad on Facebook a few weeks ago to get an idea of interest in our app, teamloop.

Considering all that we had on the other end of the ad was our marketing page, a launch date and a sign up form for an email notification, I’m happy with the results:

• 5 days
• 346,135 impressions
• 96 clicks
• 12 sign ups

It cost $91.74 to run the ad.

We still need to pin down our pricing and see if those 12 will convert, but, it’s nice to know our hypothesis is correct…people are looking for a good management and communication tool for their sports teams.

teamloop Product Cards

I had this idea to print up “product cards” four our new app. I wanted something I could easily give someone when introducing teamloop to a coach at a game or while striking up a conversation with a parent of a player over lunch.

I love how they turned out. Nice job Adam!

Welcome to the bitcohesion blog

One of the main things I hope to accomplish with this blog is accountability. As a first post, I’m going to start with just that.

Adam and I have neglected the content on bitcohesion’s site for a while. Now that we are on track for releasing teamloop we need to provide visitors a better idea about the company behind the tool. So, as a first step towards accountability…

Goal: By Saturday, Oct 9, 2010, I will update the site’s content.