MVP for an API business
Hey everyone,
This my first attempt at launching a side hustle. The main idea behind my product is to deliver grocery data for developers, so they can utilize the data to create their application.
As I continue to learn about lean startup and mvp, I am struggling to validate whether the grocery data is useful or not.
Nevertheless, here is my first mvp attempt: https://github.com/venomnert/grocery_api/tree/master/grocery_api. The idea behind the mvp is to host the data on github as a csv file and share the link with as many people as possible.
But, it would be great if anyone can give me a better idea on how I can validate if the data is useful or not.
Couldn't advise anything about mvp validation but could suggest to actually moving from CSV into JSON, especially taking into account that
resultfield is looks like a valid JSON... If the entire document is a valid and cohesive JSON you should be able to consume it on any platform, language or device.Might end up to be very helpful along the way to ease experimental integrations of your dataset(s).
Moving to JSON sounds great. Also Pavael, what do you mean by 'experimental integrations of your dataset(s)'?
By "experimental integration of your dataset(s)" I mean that - given you have pure & valid JSON on your end a company or person will be able to quickly integrate with it (write code to consume) and run an experiment whether your data in JSON (dataset) is useful/helpful for their use case...
Hope that makes sense. Good luck!
Ohh that make sense, thanks.
Do you know anyone in the market for grocery data? If not, your first step is finding these folks and building relationships with them.
Find companies that are using grocery data. Get a conversation with the relevant person. Ask them what they use it for and see what problems they have with existing solutions.
Then ask them where they get their grocery data. That'll help you identify potential competitors. You can go lookup those competitive sources and find more companies using them and do further customer development.
Good luck!
'Do you know anyone in the market for grocery data' this is the question I am trying to answer with my mvp. I will reaching out to companies in the grocery industry and try to build a relationship. Any advice on how to look for specific companies (apart from googling it)?
That's a great question.
Local networking events in your area that are industry specific, trade shows, LinkedIn are some ideas. For developers you could network at local meetups, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, etc.
Here's a great book on finding customers
www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Guide-Getting-Customers/dp/0976339609
Beautiful!
Hey! Congrats for taking the first steps. One suggestion - you can stay very lean but still measure interest if you keep a larger data in private invite-only repository.
Keep the sample open, slap a text telling anyone interested to reach out to you. And you will see how many do reach out.
Thanks for the suggestion Sumit. Quick question, do you think it would be better to host the data on my private server or on a private github repo? Which would provide customer analytic and performance out of the box?
Initially if you want to be really lean, then just count the number of people who request access to your private repo. So I suggest public (for sample) and private (with request) repositories on Github.
All data is useful. I've worked with a few companies whose only business model was to collect data. Everything from the obvious like social media data, to the not-quite-obvious like restaurant data.
There will definitely be people out there who want grocery data. A few years ago I was one of them because I wanted to build an app that could help people plan and order their groceries. There was no API for that.
Whenever I'm looking for a new dataset, I always just blindly google things, so I think your best bet to validate this would be to focus on getting the website up and working on SEO. List your API in places like Programmable Web https://www.programmableweb.com/apis/directory and any Quora or Stack Overflow questions related to finding grocery data.
Good luck!
Thanks Shaun, ' getting the website up and working on SEO. List your API in places like Programmable Web https://www.programmableweb.com/apis/directory and any Quora or Stack Overflow questions related to finding grocery data' is a GREAT idea!
I will give that a shot.
Hey Everyone, just want to say thanks for all the feedback. I have finally got a simple landing page set up with the data set: www.shodatto.com. Any critical feedback is welcome.
The next step is to find and reach out to developers who are interested in grocery data and inform them about the website.