Product Testing, Building a Community, and Growing Socials Through a Waitlist With Maven Pet

Josh:
All right. Hi everyone, I'm Josh Ledgard. Welcome back to the On Growth Podcast from KickoffLabs. Today's guest successfully launched a new pet care brand with a KickoffLabs campaign that netted over 15,000 new leads and thousands of followers leading up to their launch. In today's episode, we're going to learn what worked for them, what didn't, and how you can grow using some of the same techniques they used to launch. Let's get into it.
Hi, Guilherme, how are you?

Guilherme:
Hey, Josh. Doing great. Thanks for having me.

Josh:
Give us the explanation, what is Maven Pet and what are you guys up to today? What's the status of the business?

Guilherme:
Yeah, so actually exciting time for us. We just launched the product on the market and starting to have the first users using it and then giving us feedback. Very quickly Maven is the first AI vet to understand if your pet is safe and healthy 24/7. So what we built in Maven was the tool and virtually integrated everything in the space. There's a smart collar that goes into your pet's neck and a mobile app where we collect more data through routine checkups and wellness profiles. On top of that we have a clinical team emails looking at the data and making sure that nothing is wrong with your pet. If we do suspect that something is wrong, we will engage with you immediately to make sure we can tackle that from day one.

Josh:
Cool. I'm just curious, as a pet owner myself, what kind of data are you guys collecting on the pets to help with these determinations?

Guilherme:
Yeah, so on the back end, on the smart collar end, we collect data around movement, intensity of movement, activity, and sound. Okay. With sound, we just detect if the pet was barking or not. This is on the hardware side. And then on the mobile app we have data such as all the info about your pet, virtual check-ups tailored for your pet. So if you have a senior pet, you're going to focus on physical issues, for example. If you have a puppy, on vaccination issues. Things like Maven journal that allows you to register if your pet went to the daycare, to the groomer, if there was medication, cognitive stimulation.
And so what we do with all that data is really understanding if there are changes to the normal behavior of your pet and what that might indicate. For example, if you have a golden retriever, a change in diet and suddenly your pet is waking up much more often in the middle of the night, this might indicate an allergic reaction. Or if you have an eight year old pit bull that is getting lethargic week after week, this might indicate there's a physical problem coming up right, dysplasia or joint disease. And so that's really the secret of Maven to empower the clinical team with technology with data so we can act proactive on our pet's wellbeing. And so that's really the thing that Maven unlocks with our system.

Josh:
Very cool. And so what has the customer reaction been so far now that you've had the first few customers coming out?

Guilherme:
Yeah, I mean it's really rewarding listening to our customers. The feedback on the product has been really astonishing. People love having a vet taking care of their pets and that's really special when they understand Maven Vet is a super vet with all of this data, with all of this technology capable of understanding how I could improve my pet's life and let me know if something is wrong. I mean that's really rewarding and people are loving Maven. So we have specific cases where, for example, we understood one cat that has been misdiagnosed with anxiety for five years. And when we changed that, people say things like, "Finally my pet is looking like himself," like he has never been. I mean it's truly rewarding what we are doing at Maven and the feedback has been really great and people are loving the product. As a founder myself, it's really great to see how things act in the field and we had huge expectations towards our product and we are doing something right, for sure.

Josh:
Very cool. So tell me a little bit about your background. Do you come from a technical background, a business background, a little bit of both? How did you get to the point before you launched Maven?

Guilherme:
Yeah, so my background is biomedical engineering with a specialization in big data and telemedicine. I've never worked on that area, at least on the human side. I grew up with pets. I love pets. Previous to Maven, I worked in a bunch of other startups. Actually, before Maven I was working in the pet space on a different product as well. But yeah, my background, the idea of using data to improve our lives as humans and my love for pets really culminated in founding Maven. And actually [inaudible 00:05:15] my pet. I had a dog, a lab mix husky, so a big breed, slightly obese. When I noticed that something was wrong with Tommy, it was one day he was barking at me so I could help him stand up. And so obviously at this stage when I took him to the vet, he had severe joint disease and it's already too late to do something against it.
And so if back then I had Maven, I had a system capable of understanding. Okay, Tommy is a giant breed, slightly obese, is getting lethargic week after week, something might be wrong. And then I could further assess the situation much earlier. I could... I don't know, add supplements, physical therapy for Tommy, change a diet, maybe the outcome or the degradation of his life could have significantly been improved with something like Maven. So that's all those things culminated in founding Maven and I do believe that we needed a solution like this in the pet care industry.

Josh:
Very cool. You have a background that although you never used it on humans is very targeted to this space. When you're talking about biomedical engineering, big data analysis, that's exactly what it sounds like the product is founded on that stuff. Why did you decide to set up a wait list leading up to the launch?

Guilherme:
Yeah, so at the beginning we were very convinced of the success Maven would have on the market itself, but on the consumer side it was still a mystery for us because would people find a solution like this clear for consumers, what we can unlock and we have data gathering with a smart collar. And so the goal to launch a waiting list was precisely to prove there was actually demand for something like this. People actually wanted to gain control over their pet's health and having a tool that allowed them to do so. And so that was the reason why we were highly focused in evaluating the product for two years. At the same time, we launched and grew a wait list of people to show demand and to learn from them. So we engaged with our waiting list quite often to ask things about the product, so they were actually part of the product development efforts for these last two years.

Josh:
Very cool. And that's actually one of the best practices and I want to get into it. We'll talk about how you engaged with the list over the span of that wait list because one of the fears some people tell me is, "Oh, I don't want to keep a wait list going more than a month. What am I going to do with the people on the wait list after a month?" And you had the wait list going for several months over the course of a year it looked like that you were running the campaign. Let's just get into that now. What were you doing while you were managing the wait list to keep the wait list engaged? You mentioned that you kind of made them a little bit of the part of the product development, but let's be specific. What kinds of things were you doing? Were you sending them polls or surveys or conducting one-on-ones with them? What were you doing over the span of the wait lists in terms of involving them in the product development?

Guilherme:
Yeah, so we've built something we call the Nurture Program. So it was really about keep the wait list engaged with the brand and feeling part of a broader mission that we have at Maven. Going to specifics, it was obviously email marketing about new features that we were developing, showing them the designs, polls, asking them for UXY or UXB, things very specific. We have a closer group of followers or early adopters that we would have access to discuss more specifics or hop on an interview. We would launch quizzes for them, "Which kind of pet are you," to keep them engaged. We would offer some help from our clinical team. So our vet was always accessible to email if they had questions. So it was a bid to showcase some of the product value they could get later when we launched. Those were the kind of things that we need to keep our wait list warm and engaged with the brand so we could leverage that at launch.

Josh:
What were some of the things that you learned through that engagement? Anything specific or anything that stood out to you as surprising as through that engagement?

Guilherme:
I mean there aren't a lot of good learnings and... I mean there is no such thing as bad learnings, but learning with a not so good outcome. I mean there are people that follow us everywhere. They want to know everything. They are dying for these to get out there. But there are also people that see it for the first time they get excited, they join the wait list and to join our wait list you have to answer... So it was not just an email.
So we knew things about your pet, about your concerns as a pet owner, and about your goals with Maven. But there were obviously people that got excited at the first time but then completely forgot about Maven and what it is. I mean you will have all sorts of users on your wait list. When we launched, we actually developed something called engagement metrics based on KickoffLabs points and other metrics that we have such as answering other forms or contacting us on customer support that we kind of evaluate the engagement for every single lead on the wait list so we could approach them differently upon launch.

Josh:
As part of this, I heard you mentioned something about you were working with an even closer group of early adopter list. Were there people that had access to the product before you launched that you were working with?

Guilherme:
Yeah, so early this year, actually the first working day of the year, we sent the first batch units. So we spent December interviewing people our waiting list, understanding their concerns, their expectations towards Maven, and we selected 150 people to being the early adopters, better users for our product. So it was still a 3D printed version of the product, a buggie mobile app. But they were so excited about it, they were available to give it a try and report if something is wrong.
And actually this play of users was super important to get started and get things out there and the first problems, the first issues, but more important than that, have the first feedback on what we spent two years building. And so we haven't charged these users. All we asked was for their time and efforts to report back to us, having calls with our growth team, with our product team, and really, really doubling down on learnings. And those 150 users came from the wait lists and the ones that were most engaged with the brand and the mission and what we were developing.

Josh:
So that is sort of what you meant when you talk about the engagement metrics. You used some of the metrics from the wait list to start to identify that list of people that you then interviewed and pulled further to identify the sub list of like 150 people. You said these are the people that are going to get the true kind of MVP of the product, of the 3D printed version, as you said, the early mobile app. And was that culling down to that set of people, would you say that was successful using the engagement as one of the measurements to find out who these influencers were? Do you say that was a reasonable approximation of the best customers?

Guilherme:
Yeah, for sure. Not only do we use data from KickoffLabs... KickoffLabs is obviously the majority of it, but we have other surveys, people that reach out to us, people that were constantly asking on social media, "When is Maven launching?" And actually these engagement metrics, as we call it, was quite accurate. The reflection of it is that from our better user, like 70% or 80% of them are still using a 3D printed version of the product, a test flight mobile app like 10 months afterwards. Yeah, it worked. We couldn't expect a better result, a better outcome of it.

Josh:
Very cool. I always tell people this is a great best practice. It's cool to hear exactly how you did it in terms of getting the wait list built those most engaged people and then getting them on that early adopter list after you've done some polls and additional surveys of them and then having them give you that feedback on the products you had in launch. Would you say that the feedback you got shaped both the product and the marketing messages for the product?

Guilherme:
Yeah, for sure. One of the challenges that we have, and because we are building a category defining product, so maybe there's not a vet available 24/7, it is not a health tracker, it's really something new. It's like a new way of taking care of your pet. Product marketing and product messaging are our key here, right? And so the first users, how they would describe the product, how they would refer a product to a friend, those were the first insights on how we should position Maven, how we should communicate at Maven. And this is still a learning for us today, but obviously it started with those first a group of...

Josh:
Very cool. So I want to go back... We're going to back up. We talked through engagement a bit because that came up. Now I want to go back to you knew you wanted to do a wait list to prove the demand and get some learnings. We've kind of talked about how the things that you've learned and how you went about learning from them, but part of proving the demand is typically also proving that yourselves, as a company, are able to market and get people onto the wait list. When you decided to build a wait list... We'll start way back at the beginning. How did you discover KickoffLabs? Do you remember?

Guilherme:
I mean I was searching for two. I mean we are startup of a small team, so I was searching for a tool that would allow me to build a waitlist with a score with minimum development effort. And that's how I came up with KickoffLabs.

Josh:
Cool. And then the first version of the wait list, was that a page built on KickoffLabs or did you have your own website and then you connected it to a KickoffLabs page?

Guilherme:
Yeah, so we had our own website and to join the wait list you would have to fill a type form. At the end of the type form, not only would we send the lead to KickoffLabs, but we would redirect the user to their ranking page with the different actions the user could take to move up on the rank to gain a couple of points. And so that's how it was first integrated. Later on, we had a shake your spot page on the website as well using KickoffLabs.

Josh:
Very cool. So in the first few months of running this when you had the type form that then took people to their status page, how involved was the type form? A common question we get is how many questions should I ask people to get them to sign up? What's too much? What's too little? Was it like a 20 minute survey people had to fill out or were you just asking your pet's name and email address? Where were you on that spectrum?

Guilherme:
It was a bit more complex than that. Definitely not a 20 minute survey. What I like about a type form is I can actually see the drop off rate in each question and how long is it taking users to fill the form. With my venue, you could easily fill the form under four minutes. I think that it was around four minutes. The goal is to ask questions you can act on. So if you are just asking something that doesn't make sense for you in terms of business or go to market strategy or our product, it really doesn't matter.
We ask things about obviously your name, your pet's name, if you have a dog, if you have a cat, your pet name, I think I've said it. Where are you based in terms of country? What are your biggest pain points as a pet owner? What do you like to achieve with Maven? Those were important questions for us to position the product and to prioritize what we should build next based on the questions that people have. And then obviously email and we ask about if you would add iOS, Android or other devices because at the moment maybe it's only available for iOS, so it's important to have an understanding of the display here. So yeah, I think it was less than 10 questions.

Josh:
So you had this survey around 10 questions or less that you're having people fill out. You mentioned the drop off rate. Do you recall what the conversion rate was most of the time through the wait list, having people answer those questions to get onto the list?

Guilherme:
Yep. I mean after the first question, the conversion rate was high. It was okay. There was some drop rates when you make email a mandatory question. I think that's normal out there. I can't recite the numbers, but it was not super extensive because you could see the number of questions when you were feeling the type form because it was embedded on our website with our branding, the conversion rate was the completion rate.

Josh:
So then you've got the question, it leads them to the wait list and we'll talk about the wait list mechanics in a minute. How did you drive people to your site so that they would see the ability to request access and take the survey in the first place? How did you go about finding pet owners, driving them, educating them up front to even get them to your site?

Guilherme:
One thing that we learned, again, from our user base was that people were actually looking for solutions to be proactive on their pet's wellbeing. And so they were asking things like make Maven vet engage with me if something is wrong, let Maven vet pinpoint or suggest things where I can improve my pet's life. So those were the things that we were seeing on the wait list that then we used to communicate with the pet owners out there. One specific example with Maven, you can actually end up saving a lot of money on that build and that's one of the biggest concerns at the moment for a pet owner. And so we leverage that on our communication, on our social media, on our paid efforts so that people could first interact with the brand and come to the website. And then it's a lot of SEO has always been on our inception, so the name itself Maven, means expert, right?
So we want Maven pet to be your expert toward pet's wellbeing and there's a lot of distributed and wrong information about pets out there. From day one, we focus on building high quality content from our clinical team to tackle specifics. For example, diet and what kind of foods are good for my pet has always been something that we focus early on. Referral and leveraging the referral loop from KickoffLabs. People love talking about their pets and sharing things about their pets. So that works well as well. And then I think it's being very emotional. So pets are family members. If you're a pet owner... Josh, I'm sure you feel this. Our pets are our kids, right? And so it's really emotional. We leverage a lot with images of humans with their pets like bonding and that works well as well.

Josh:
So I guess you mentioned a lot of different techniques. You talked about social media posts, you talked about SEO, you talked about advertising. It sounds like you had your hands in all of those different aspects. Where would you say the majority of the first... Let's just say... I'll just pick a number, the first thousand people on the waiting list. Where would you think you drove a majority of that traffic from?

Guilherme:
Yeah, so actually we've been working in the brand space. So we've already built a... Let's say a community around the company and it was really leveraging that community with a new product called Maven. We even launched a kick starter campaign previously that we leveraged the backers as well. And those two efforts drove the first, let's say 3,000, 4,000 people on the wait list. Yeah, that was great because people already would follow us on our social media. We already have people subscribing to our newsletter. So that was kind of the first efforts that we did early on.

Josh:
You were already building a community of things. So ways that you built that community you started, you had a kick starter campaign that you did before this wait list for the product. Did you reach the funding goal for the kick starter campaign?

Guilherme:
Oh yeah, we did. Then we opened an Indigo campaign afterwards to keep receiving help from early adopters and enthusiasts about the product.

Josh:
Was the community... Was it a private Facebook group? Was it a Slack channel? How did you manage the community? Or was it just people on the newsletter that you were emailing?

Guilherme:
It was just people on the newsletter on social media following us. Yeah, we don't have yet a structured community on Slack or a Facebook group. It's something that it's on our roadmap because it makes total sense on the market we are in.

Josh:
Now let's talk in terms of how you've... We talked about how you got the first couple thousand people on the list that you worked on, community building newsletter, building content, getting that out there. Once somebody joins and they're interested in getting priority access, what you say... And I'm looking at a version of the wait list status page now, which for those listening we will of course share in the show notes a link to this. But it says you're on the wait list, it tells you your position, how many referrals you've got, it asks you if you're interested in priority access, and it gives you some actions that you ask people to do. For every referral you're giving them a hundred points and then you're giving them between 20 and 40 points for following you on social channels. So you had an Instagram, a TikTok, a LinkedIn, Facebook, and a Twitter channel. So you covered your bases on the major networks there. Let's kind of talk about each of the actions a bit. Did you feel like you had success from getting people to refer other pet owners to the campaign?

Guilherme:
Yeah, for sure. The highly engaged group that we were talking early on, they all refer someone to join Maven as well. And so people were actually doing it. I do think that referring a friend was the main source, maybe because of the points obviously, but it was the main source or action that people would take to move up on the wait list. So yeah, it worked pretty well and people actually were excited about Maven and referring it to friends because everyone knows other pet owners that's struggling with their pets of or have a senior pet or just adopted a pet, have a lot of questions. And so it was something that worked well for us.

Josh:
And the other actions, did you see a noticeable uptick in followers' engagement in your social media channels throughout the campaign?

Guilherme:
Yeah, we saw some mainly on Instagram and Facebook, not so much on the other social networks, Twitter or TikTok, but we saw some people following us on social media and engaging with us afterwards, wanting the product to go live as soon as possible.

Josh:
I'm curious because you had this period where you're having people test the early version of the product. Were you posting on social media, their experiences? Were you having them post or share their experience on social media as part of the marketing? So is that effort not only giving you product feedback, but were you reusing that as like, "Hey, here's what early adopters are doing, here's a story of this pet, here's a story of this owner." Were you using that material as additional marketing materials?

Guilherme:
So we used at launch. Okay, so for example, the majority of the use cases we have for anxiety pads, Maven diet, pets with physical problems, the majority of those stories came from that play of better users. Early on, we start looking for specific use cases that can usually resonate with different patterns. We didn't push towards adding people, creating content on their social media or asking them for videos or reviews or feedback. We were highly focused on learning, but it kind of happened naturally. Okay, because one out of four pet owners have a social media account for their pets and when they are loving the product, they tend to share. Okay. So a couple of our pet users without us even asking, they were sharing their experience, they were sharing Maven on their social media to their followers. We kind of saw it happen naturally, but we didn't push to it. Yeah.

Josh:
So did you say one out of four pet owners have a social media account for their pet?

Guilherme:
Yep, it's crazy.

Josh:
Wow. I did not expect that.

Guilherme:
Do you have one?

Josh:
I don't, but now that you say it, one of my friends has an Instagram account just for their dog. So now that you say it, I think about it and yeah, it seems like maybe one out of four is right. I know a couple people with an Instagram account for their dog. I'm not one of the people, but.

Guilherme:
I'm sure they're more active on their pet's social media account than on their own.

Josh:
Their pet is more famous than I am, so. It can be humbling when you look at the numbers. We got a few more minutes left and I want to talk about if you were to summarize kind of the best and the worst. So let's talk about what you think worked best as part of the launch campaign. One of the two or three things you did tell people like, "Hey, we did this, it worked really well and we'd recommend you do it too if you're running a similar launch campaign."

Guilherme:
Yeah, I think that launching the wait list was early validation of what we were doing. If I just spent two years building the product and then assess the demand on the market, maybe I could lose time. So I think as you were saying, this feels like the right way to do things, right? At the same time, I'm building a product, I have a vision for it, I can build a landing page, I can have people come to the landing page and give me feedback about it and show interest through joining the wait list. And so I think that was a right step that we did early on. I don't feel there's a lot of information about how to build a wait list out there. I think that in terms of content and indication, you guys are doing a great job here. There's not a lot of benchmarks.
What's the conversion rate that you could expect after launch? There's not a lot of data. How long should you wait until you start to convert the wait list? I spoke with a couple of other founders that had a wait list and their biggest learning is always we waited too long to launch the product to the wait list because the longer you wait, the more difficult it'll get to convert people from a wait list to subscribers. Other thing that we question ourselves, should we charge or at least ask for a credit card for people joining the waiting list? We chose not to do so because we still didn't have the product or image or even images about the product. So because we launched so early, it didn't make sense at that stage. But it could be stunning that other people could depending on the stage of product development they are.

Josh:
I mean it's interesting because on that note, you did validation in terms of people would pay something for a solution because you did the kick starter and the go-go campaign. So while you weren't charging for the wait list, you had that level of validation because you could have launched the kick starter and maybe you weren't getting many people to pay for the kick starter and that would've proven something about either the messaging or the product itself. But you did do a little bit of that validation by running the kick starter concurrently or before the wait list. So it's interesting that you mentioned that as something that you maybe would consider because from my perspective you did that more than a lot of people do.

Guilherme:
Yeah, I agree with you. I feel that the audience for the kick starter and go-go, it's very particular. But yeah, to some extent, we need validated people who pay for something like this. And the wait list showed not only demand for the product, but looking specifically of the question what people want to achieve with Maven, there was a bunch of things not even related to Maven, okay. But 60% or 70% of the users were specifically asking for features that only Maven in the pet space can deliver.
Okay, things that I've mentioned before, early detection of illness or having a vet review my pet sleep or having a vet suggest to me how to improve my pet's life based on data. These three things only Maven in the pet space can provide. And so it was not only a validation of demand, but of the things that we are prioritizing in term of product as well. And so that was huge. So 10 months afterwards we launched a product and the feedback has been great because we've listened to our users from day one. And so that is my recommendation, number one, involve the potential users as early as you can.

Josh:
Yep, absolutely. We talked a little bit about it in the beginning, but how you describe how the launch has gone since you... How long ago did you actually launch and how has it gone since then?

Guilherme:
Yeah, so we launched in September. Two months have gone by and I mean we are still in this learning mode. If I want to build a sustainable consumer subscription product and all the examples that we have from Noon or other companies, you need to nail product from day one, right? I mean my first 50 users will bring the next hundred, which will bring the next thousand. So I have to make sure the first 50 users have the best experience of their life.
And so we are not pushing for growth yet, still learning a lot from our users. Now they are actually paying for the product. Something that we did as well was measure everything we can so that's highly important. So people are actually engaging with the mobile app, understanding which features they are using the most, which features they don't like. Not only having quantitative data on that, but qualitative data through interviews with our best engaged users, least engaged users. That is where we are still at. And so the product is out there. Everyone can join Maven and get access to it. And yeah, exciting times. We are learning a lot of issues to be addressed obviously, but exciting times. We are really building something special for the pet owners and the pets.

Josh:
Well, something that wasn't obvious to me, and maybe this is... So when I went to your website and I'm looking at Maven and you say "Order Now," it's a subscription obviously, and you've got an app with the subscription, but as part of that subscription, you're also sending that smart collar to read the data. Is that correct?

Guilherme:
That's correct, yeah. When you join Maven, we send what we call Maven Kit. That's the smart caller that collects data on your pet and you have access to the mobile app to your Maven vet, and all of the rest of the service.

Josh:
Very cool. And so if somebody wants to learn more about Maven, obviously that you would send them to Maven.pet. If they want to get in touch with you and ask you questions about the launch or the product, how could somebody best get in touch with you?

Guilherme:
Yeah, just reach out to g@maven.pet. It could have been simpler. I mean, we are an open book. I love talking about pets, about the pet industry, about my vision for the pet industry in the next five, 10 years. So feel free to reach out. Yeah.

Josh:
Cool. Absolutely. We'll put that up with your bio in the show notes so people can reach out. Yeah, really appreciate your time today. I feel like I learned a lot about the pet space and from your best practices about engaging users. I think a lot of our customers will take that to heart, I hope. Because I do think it is a winning combination in terms of keeping people engaged over a longer launch and also, as you pointed out, learning to prove the demand and what you learned about the product throughout that experience. And so thanks again for being on. I really appreciate it.

Guilherme:
Yeah, thanks Josh. It was a pleasure here and everyone else hope to reach out.

Josh:
All right. Thanks.