First, Justin went on eBay and bought a used IKEA employee shirt. Next, he created a few official-looking IKEA product labels and price tags and put them on a handful of early prototypes of the Walhub. As a final clever touch, since IKEA is famous for its quirky Nordic-sounding names, for the purposes of this experiment he changed the name of his product from Walhub to Wälhub to make it even more believable.
With a couple of accomplices, he infiltrated the local IKEA store wearing a yellow employee shirt and carrying a bagful of Wälhubs. After looking around to make sure no real IKEA employees were nearby, he proceeded to put a handful of Wälhubs on display in several areas of the store where IKEA shoppers had a chance to see them—and purchase them. Since he was wearing an official-looking IKEA shirt, other employees assumed he was one of their colleagues setting up a new display.
Then he stood back to observe how people reacted to his product. How many people would stop to check it out? How many, if any, would put a Wälhub in their big blue IKEA bag and buy it, thinking it was a bona fide IKEA product? Which location within the store (e.g., kitchen, living room, garage) resulted in the most interest and sales?
It turns out that people were interested in the Wälhub, and several shoppers put one in their shopping bag and headed for the checkout. As you can imagine, Justin’s fake IKEA price tags did not scan properly, and the cashiers did not recognize that product. Despite a bit of confusion at the checkout stand, in the end everyone who tried to buy a Wälhub was able to take it home for free. This was a win-win: customers got a freebie, and Upwell Design got valuable YODA. Justin and his team filmed the whole experiment and posted a short video on YouTube (search for “Upwell Walhub Ikea”). The video is well worth seeking out, because it’s quite inspiring to watch the technique in action, and it’s also quite funny.
What a brilliant way to validate an idea and to go from opinions to data. When it comes to skin in the game, customers putting a Wälhub in their bag expecting to pay for it is as good as it gets. Here’s an example of the kind of YODA Justin might have collected using the Infiltrator pretotype:
Duration of experiment: one hour
Number of people who walked by the display: 240
Number of people who picked up a Wälhub to check it out: 12 (5%)
Number of people who tried to buy a Wälhub: 3 (1.25%)
Of course, what Justin did took more than creativity; it took guts and it involved risk. I don’t know the penalty for infiltrating a major chain store pretending to be an employee of that store and using its retail space for your own market-research purposes. But I suspect that, if caught, you might get into some trouble—or get a lot of press and attention for your product (which is exactly what happened in this case).
The good news is that you can use the very same technique without having to risk being arrested. It’s not as exciting as infiltrating an IKEA store under false pretenses, but Justin could have offered several independent hardware store owners a bit of money (say $100) in exchange for putting his product on display in their store for a couple of weeks to see if anyone would buy it.
Let me end this example with a few words from the daring Justin Porcano about his IKEA experiment:
The results were better than I could’ve hoped for. The experiment helped to not only validate a consumer market for the product, but it revealed information about the effectiveness of the packaging, the price point, and ideal locations within a retail space. Beyond the research aspect of the experiment we used the video as a marketing tool. We received 75,000 YouTube views, an interview on national TV, and creative accolades from press outlets like Advertising Age. Upwell was able to stretch a $600 marketing budget about as far as it would go while receiving valuable sales and market research.*
It’s fun, exciting, and illuminating to run an Infiltrator pretotype in brick-and-mortar stores, because you can not only keep track of numbers, but also observe how people react to your product. If most people pick up your product, look at the price, let out a whistle, and put it back, you can safely deduce that they think it’s too expensive. However, since a significant—and growing—amount of shopping has migrated to online stores, you might wonder if you can run an Infiltrator pretotype on the internet. Of course you can! And you should. Taking advantage of an established website’s traffic is almost always a much cheaper and faster option that trying to attract traffic to a new website.
First, you need to identify an existing online retailer with an established client base that already buys products in the same category as yours. Next, you contact the retailer and work out a deal to display your product on a trial basis. In exchange for the data you will collect, for example, you can offer to let the retailer keep any of the revenue from the sales or throw in a few dollars to “rent” a bit of its online presence—it will be well worth it. As always, it’s easier to contact and work with smaller businesses than giant corporations to run this kind of trial.
The Relabel Pretotype
The Relabel pretotype takes advantage of the fact that with a minor change in external appearance, we can leverage an existing product or service to pretotype a new product or service. By putting a different label on a product, you can pretend that it’s something other than what it is—and see if people are interested in it.
Sounds fishy? Not really, but this pretotyping technique did have a fishy origin.
Example: Second-Day Sushi
A few years ago, while I was having lunch with a small group of Stanford undergraduates, a plastic box of prepackaged sushi pieces, the lunch choice of one of the students, triggered the following conversation:
“How’s that sushi in a plastic box?” asked one of the students between chomps of a cheeseburger.
“Expensive! Almost ten bucks . . . but at least they gave me a free pair of chopsticks.”
“I think it’s a rip-off,” interjected a third student, who was eating a bowl of chili. “There’s no reason for it to be so expensive; it’s just a bunch of rice with a few little pieces of fish.”
“Ah, but the fish has to be really fresh—and fresh fish is expensive,” replied Cheeseburger Guy.
“I bet that I could feed you not-so-fresh sushi, and with all that soy sauce and wasabi you couldn’t tell the difference,” said Chili Gal. “In fact, I bet you there would be a big market for cheap sushi.”
“Yeah, right. I can already see it. Second-Day Sushi. Better go grab that domain name right now,” said Cheeseburger Guy, laughing.
“Actually, I don’t think it’s such a bad idea,” said Sushi Man. “If it were reasonably tasty, safe to eat, and cheap enough, I’d consider Second-Day Sushi. Heck, I’d eat sushi every day if I could afford it.”
“I doubt it,” said Cheeseburger Guy. “And even if you were crazy enough to actually go for it, no sane person would risk food poisoning or worse just to save a few bucks.”
Normally, I avoid work-related conversations when I am eating, but in this case I could not resist turning this Thoughtlandish exchange of opinions into a teachable moment: “You know, we could settle this matter with a pretotype . . .” Ten minutes later we had a plan.
First we came up with an XYZ Hypothesis:
At least 20% of packaged-sushi eaters will try Second-Day Sushi if it’s half the price of regular packaged sushi.
Then we hypozoomed to the Stanford campus:
At least 20% of students buying packaged sushi at Coupa Café today at lunch will choose Second-Day Sushi if it’s half the price of regular packaged sushi.
Finally, after a minute of pretostorming—brainstorming about ways to pretotype the idea—we came up with the Relabel technique. We would create some labels that said, “Second-Day Sushi: 1/2 Off!”, put those labels on half of the boxes available for sale at the café, and then count what percentage of people who buy sushi for lunch decided to risk food poisoning and intestinal parasites to save a few bucks.
As you can probably guess, the idea for Second-Day Sushi may have sounded plau
sible to some (in Thoughtland), but when tested in the real world it proved difficult to find anyone (let alone 20% of the market) willing to take the bait (sorry!). The Second-Day Sushi idea was dead in the water—ha!
As you may have noticed, this example combines a Relabel pretotype with an Infiltrator pretotype. We are leveraging not only an existing product and package, but also an existing customer base and infrastructure (i.e., the café and its lunchtime traffic). By combining multiple pretotyping techniques, you can dramatically reduce both the cost and the time it takes to run your experiments. In the pages that follow, you will see several additional examples of pretotyping combinations. And speaking of pages . . .
Example: Book Covers
You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can get some market data from it. My friend Mike—not his real name, his real name is Steve—is an avid collector and disseminator of (mostly bad) computer-programming jokes. His collection includes such pearls as: “What do you call a programmer from Finland? Nerdic.” (And you thought my puns were lame.)
Since I’ve known him, Mike has been talking about putting together a book of such jokes. He’s convinced that many programmers would buy it: “Dude, I’d sell a ton of them. It would be the perfect gift for geeks.” He also thinks he has the perfect title for it: 100000000 Programming Jokes. (100000000 is the number 256 written in binary code. Get it? If not, don’t worry. I can guarantee you’re not missing much.)
Once again, the idea sounds plausible, and I am sure he would sell some, but how many? Could he sell enough to justify the effort and expense to produce the book? With pretotyping, he could get some YODA to answer those questions, and a Relabel pretotype combined with an Infiltrator would work extremely well in this case.
First we have to translate his fuzzy Market Engagement Hypothesis into an XYZ Hypothesis. Time to “say it with numbers.” Mike thinks that “most programmers will buy the book,” but when we translate “most” into a number we get “at least 50%”—and even Mike realizes that that sounds a bit too optimistic. Eventually, he settles on a more realistic number, and we converge on the following XYZ Hypothesis:
At least 5% of programmers will buy 100000000 Programming Jokes for themselves or their friends at $9.95.
Then we hypozoom to an xyz hypothesis we can test with the help of a local bookstore (yes, a few still exist):
At least 25% of programmers browsing for computer science and programming books at Books Inc. in Mountain View who see a book titled 100000000 Programming Jokes on the shelf will pick it up and examine it.
If the XYZ Hypothesis is correct, then our xyz experiment should reflect it. In other words, if at least 25% of the people who see the book cover while browsing the computer programming section pick it up and check it out, it’s plausible that one out of five of them would buy it—if it were an actual book of jokes. We can test the hypothesis by relabeling an existing book with a realistic-looking 100000000 Programming Jokes cover, putting that book on the shelf, and then counting how many people who see the title pick it up.
Once they open the book, of course, they will realize that you truly can’t judge a book by the cover. But at that point, Mike can swoop in, explain the experiment, apologize for the little trick, and give them a small gift to make up for it (perhaps a sample page from the book with ten of his jokes). Or he can explain that the book is not ready yet, but if they give him their email address (some skin in the game), he’d be happy to send them a copy. If the data from a few experiments like this confirms his hypothesis, Mike can begin working on a proper book.
Of course, you can do a similar test online (and you probably should do that to confirm the brick-and-mortar store results), but it’s so much fun to do some of these experiments in person. Just remember to keep it legal and ethical—and be generous with the people who provide you with YODA.
Pretotyping Variations and Combinations
I’ve had fun collecting and sharing what I believe are compelling examples of pretotyping techniques and assigning them memorable names. But I want to emphasize that the list of pretotypes I’ve shared with you is by no means exhaustive; think of it as just a few examples of the pretotyping mindset at work. Consider it a source of inspiration for coming up with your own pretotyping techniques, variations on the existing techniques, or combinations of two or more techniques. You’ve already seen me do this: the Second-Day Sushi example combined an Infiltrator pretotype with a Relabel pretotype. But let me share with you two more examples.
Example: The Live Demo Pretotype
Instead of using an online video to help the audience visualize and understand the potential of a not-yet-functional product in action (as you would with a YouTube pretotype), you put on a demonstration in front of a live audience—as they used to do in markets in the days before television and way before YouTube.
Let’s assume that you have an idea for an app to help students relax and focus, so they are in a better mental state for studying and for test taking. You have done enough research and experiments on yourself and your friends to convince you that such an app would work. But before you invest weeks or months in properly developing, testing, publishing, and marketing it, you want to know what percentage of people in your target market would be willing to pay $5 for it. You go through the steps with which you are familiar (i.e., Market Engagement Hypothesis→ XYZ Hypothesis→ . . .) until you have a neatly hypozoomed xyz hypothesis you can test right away, something like this:
10% of Stanford students going to the campus bookstore at lunchtime today who stop to watch a three-minute demonstration of the Relax, Focus & Study app will give us their stanford.edu email address to be notified when our app is launched.
You set up a table and chair near the bookstore and put on a little show:
Come gather around to see the amazing power of our Relax, Focus & Study app. By using a combination of scientifically proven visual and audio cues, our app will turn your smartphone into an amazing tool to reduce anxiety and induce a state of relaxed focus, ideal for studying, in as little as two minutes. My partner Lisa, sitting here, is connected to a heart-rate and blood-pressure monitor. As you can see, right now Lisa’s high heart rate and blood pressure indicate that she’s in a state of mild stress—no surprise with all of you strangers staring at her. But watch what happens as Lisa puts on her earbuds, starts the Relax, Focus & Study app, and concentrates on the screen. Wait for it . . . Wait for it . . . There! Her heart rate has begun to drop along with her blood pressure. And it continues to drop . . .
You get the idea.
At the end of the demonstration, you tell the students in the audience that the app is not yet ready for launch, but if they go to RelaxFocusAndStudyApp.com and enter their stanford.edu email address (not some throwaway email account like [email protected]), they will be able to buy the app for $1 instead of $5 when it launches. Or if you have enough chutzpah, you can try to collect the $1 at that time—even more skin in the game—provided you are prepared to refund the money if necessary. Of course, for the demonstration, you don’t need to have a working version of your Relax, Focus & Study app; just find a video with music that helps Lisa relax and use that for now.
Example: The Morsel Pretotype
We’ve already used a Fake Door pretotype to validate the market interest for a nonfiction book on squirrel watching and a Relabel pretotype to test a novelty book of nerdy jokes. But let’s assume that you are thinking of writing something a bit more ambitious and literary in nature, like a novel. In addition to being written in good-enough prose, to be successful a work of fiction must engage the readers with an interesting story and great characters.
Most authors, like most entrepreneurs and inventors, believe that their idea for a story and their characters will be as captivating to the market as they are to them. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The Beast of Failure has a taste for ink, and most books (especially novels) fail in the market. Even if you could persuade a literary agent or
a publisher to read your masterpiece, their decision (which is usually a rejection) will be based on their expert opinion and understanding of the market—and we know how that plays out. Some of the most successful novels in history, from Harry Potter to Moby Dick, were originally rejected by scores of publishers.
So what are fiction authors or publishers to do to maximize the chances that a book will be successful? They should pretotype the book by writing a few sample chapters, expose those chapters to a subset of their target audience, and collect some YODA. In other words, give the market a few free morsels of your yet-to-be-completed work and then ask for some skin in the game in exchange for more.
There are many ways to do this, but my favorite example these days comes from Andy Weir, author of the novel The Martian, a story about an astronaut marooned on Mars. A software engineer by trade, Weir enjoyed writing science fiction as a hobby but, like most aspiring writers, he experienced nothing but rejection after rejection from literary agents and publishers. Frustrated, he decided to post chapters from The Martian as a free serial on his website. A growing number of people came back week after week to read what happened to the marooned astronaut. Eventually, he had thousands of online fans who not only read the chapters, but volunteered their time to edit, fact-check, and suggest ideas for the book—all examples of skin in the game and a great initial indicator of market engagement.
But the story gets even better. At the request of some of his fans, Weir published the novel on Amazon as a Kindle e-book. He wanted to make it available for free, but was forced to ask for a little bit of skin in the game since the minimum price Amazon would allow was 99¢. In three months, he sold over 30,000 copies—enough to qualify as a science-fiction bestseller on Amazon’s ranking. With that kind of YODA, you don’t need to knock on agents’ or publishers’ doors; they come knocking on yours. In a matter of weeks, Weir had an agent, a publisher, and an offer from a major studio to turn the book into a motion picture. Both the book and the movie were spectacularly successful. The Martian was The Right It.
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