Unfortunately, the girl holding this Card ☝️ up here is just a famous Stock Photos actress. Well, we didn't have time to find passionate enough users to hold our card with such pride and happiness.
TL; DR: In this opportunity, I'd like to debate about some of the joys and difficulties of helping to raise a startup. It's a great way to evaluate everything we've done right, the mistakes that were made and how we can learn from an intense journey like this.
The year was 2015, I started as a Product Designer at a startup called Nimbus (it was not called Nimbus at the time). We were super small, so I was responsible for a little bit of everything: naming process, brand design, product strategy, product design, communication and marketing, in a process of approximately 8 months. It was my first experience with a blooming startup and a super agile team.
In a nutshell: Nimbus offered a different loyalty platform, rewarding multiple user actions within retail outlets, which could be shops, restaurants, malls and other places covered by the Nimbus program.
In the picture above ☝️, there is the NFC Nimbus card, and it all sort of started around it. At the time, 2015, we still didn’t have a good range of NFC cell phones present in the Brazilian market. So the NFC card was the most assertive decision. The idea was simple: customers received their card and instantly had access to the platform's network of advantages. It was a very physical and personal approach, with everything integrated into our digital ecosystem. How to make a system like this work in a saturated market?
We quickly understood one thing: traditional loyalty programs were outdated 💀 and had several issues to be addressed
At the initial stages, the research aimed at better understanding how loyalty systems worked, discovering difficulties and opportunities. I was not responsible for the (small) research team - they were just two talented guys, by the way - but I followed up their findings closely. These were important discoveries for all of us. Some of them 👇
01.
The loyalty programs were never transparent regarding the real value of the points the customers collected. Many of them were still too obscure about how they calculated the relation between prices and points.
02.
They had no personal bond with their customers, missing the opportunity to offer advantages that would really make sense to them. They were cold and impersonal systems.
03.
Last, these programs were very focused on large retail networks or medium-sized retailers. The small business owner wasn't encouraged to be part of such systems, and we needed to do something about it.
The Check-in approach
It was clear to us that our goals should be focused on being transparent and close to our customers. We've had a great opportunity here. With that goal in mind, the main concept was based on in-person check-in within the affiliated stores. They'd be equipped with a Nimbus Exclusive NFC Totem (fancy name for tablet + stand), encouraging a physical approach into the stores.
With the functional structure implemented, clients could enter their stores, check-in at a totem inside the store and immediately accumulate points, simply by checking-in. Our goal was to establish a close bond between the customer and the brands. This allows the shopkeeper some advantages:
The user could share the check-in on their social networks, earning even more points and giving visibility to a store.
A predetermined amount of check-ins inside a store would give the retailers more visibility and publicity, boosting sales, products or services.
And finally, well, the user was still in the store environment. 💡Aha-moment: We've discovered that the user that got into the store just to check-in had more receptiveness to listen to the sellers, being more likely to purchase goods from the store. Great!
For the customer, the points would be worth real money, with a very clear approach to how they gain discounts or even obtain free products. This is where our promise of transparency comes in. Win-win situation.
Very very very brief infographic showing how the platform works
The Products Suite
Well, to make it all happen, we needed to align our product ecosystem, taking care of different stakeholders, its journeys and points of contact. We would then have the retailers system (cloud), the check-ins & payments app (in-store), and the (non-existent) client app (cloud). Further explanations on the next chapter.
Getting Started: Retailers
Initially, we had to get deep through the technology and validate what was feasible and scalable. The technology team was 100% focused on aligning the NFC communication interface with a reward system that made sense. It was complex and time-consuming for developers.
I've worked closely with the development team, keeping track of implementations and looking at improvement opportunities. Because of this proximity, we've chosen to design the Retailer's system, delivering rapid value to them. And more, the more retailers joined us, the greater our initial value to our end users.
Above, the retailer's system. Basically, it worked as a CRM, providing smart information from its customers so that assertive marketing decisions could be made from the platform.
The next touchpoint was our totem. Basically, it was a Tablet App, with built-in payment system and check-ins interface. It was the main communication link between the Nimbus system and its customers.
The experience should be fluid and without further traction. "Like magic," we used to say.
We've reduced the flow complexity as much we could, aiming to deliver a simple yet delightful MVP. Here, the user could perform a check-in or simply apply a discount with accumulated reward points. Initially, the customer could use his Nimbus card to perform these transactions, but the urgent need for an app that controlled the client's actions delayed us considerably.
The Fall of a Startup
Just a quick recap of our apps:
Retailers, they had two systems: inside the store, a Tablet App (1) for check-ins and payments and, in the cloud, a CRM system (2).
Customers/clients, they had their Nimbus card (1) and a not-so-exciting 🤷online environment (2) to control check-ins, payments and promotion opportunities.
From a given moment, we've faced a series of problems that became bigger than expected. We were about to have a great partnership to prove our concept, and it looked like it would be our ultimate test. We were almost there, and the shopkeepers were eager for the demo.
There was a important missing piece in this puzzle. "But, hey, you guys have just a Card?" - potential prospects asked. "How will the user keep track of his spendings, discounts, and promotions?" - we've just realized that we didn't have convincing answers to that question. We faced the truth: the customer's journey had painful issues without his app. I guess we were so focused on delivering top-notch technology that we ended up defocusing of our end users and potential customers. In the end, our promising partnership never happened, and little by little we were getting suffocated about how to proceed.
Over time, the company was slowly running out of capital. It was a conscious choice not to look for investors at that initial moment. The partners were focused and amazing people to work with, but the money invested was finite. Then, we've neither had a working and polished product nor investors to back us up. It was the end of the journey. 😢
Lessons learned and personal insights
We've spent time investing in business models that we didn't know if they would really work.
We've focused a lot on building the product, and we didn't invest enough effort in research, in order to get to know more of our market and customers.
I'm not sure we'd found the ideal product-market fit. We ran out of money without this validation. We'll never know for sure. Maybe we were solving the wrong problem.
Testing and validating as soon as possible had never made so much sense for me.
A personal hypothesis: the Client's App was missing. Back then, we underestimated the need to integrate NFC cellphones early into our system, we didn't anticipate that. At a later stage of development, the customer's interaction with the platform was the Nimbus Card and an online system that was better suited for desktop PCs. Nothing sexy or appropriate.
That's it. 😊
I would like to thank the fantastic Nimbus team, hard workers who were part of one of my best professional experiences, ever. Jessé (J), Luã (Luã), Miguel (Miguelito), Silvia (Sil), Tarek (Tatá), Viviane (Vivi), you rock! 🤘
Dear reader, if you got here, thank you for persistence and patience. You rock! 🤘
Regards.
