Elsie

After exploring the idea of adding a productized service on top of our SaaS app, we came up with a plan on how we might provide a quality service for businesses.

We focus on the individual Genetic Counselor with our SaaS. However, our new service has a focus on businesses that have many Genetic Counselors on staff who need to practice across many states.

We decided to pitch this new service idea to a contact we had made via twitter (yes, we got a solid lead on twitter). We had spoken with this contact earlier when we tried to pitch our SaaS to help their GCs stay licensed. However, they told us that their most significant pain point was obtaining and renewing the licenses. So we decided to see if we can solve their pain point.

We received word that they want to give us a shot! They're excited about having us help them, and we're excited to see how it goes. It's a bit different than what my co-founder and I had in mind, but the way we see it, we're adapting to see what works.

Earlier this year, my co-founder and I launched our Genetic Counseling CEU tracking app. We've landed a few customers but haven't gotten the type of traction that we were hoping to get. During our initial launch, someone reached out to us and introduced us to a few people who run remote counseling companies. It became apparent that what they were most interested in was a "do it for me" solution where someone obtains licenses for their newly hired GCs. Right now, the process is tedious because it involves getting up to 20 licenses for a single GC (a company we spoke with is hiring ten new GCs by summer). This work is something they'd rather not have any internal staff doing.

Initially, we thought maybe we would expand on our SaaS, but that would mean that they would still have to work on obtaining the licenses themselves. On top of that, building out a software solution to this would take a long time, and I'm nervous about spending so much time on something before being able to get customers.

A few weeks ago, I came across the idea of a productized service. I like the productize model because it would mean that we could launch a service quickly (within a week or two). Further, we'd be able to use our existing app (with some minor tweaks) to provide customers with a dashboard that would help them keep track of our progress, while also providing their GCs an easy way to track their CEU progress. My co-founder is a GC, she knows the ins and outs of the entire process, and while it may be a very manual process at first, I could see us automating or hiring, which would help make the process smoother and more efficient.

At the same time, I'm a bit nervous because we'd be handling a lot more work than we originally anticipated. We'd be working hand-in-hand with the GC to help them obtain each license. I'm guessing it's entirely doable because my co-founder has the experience of doing this for herself. It's just a matter of locking down the process for each state and documenting every step along the way to make it easier for us to repeat the process.

I'm freelancing at the moment and have tons of flexibility, and if this takes off, I may be able to start focusing on our business 100% significantly sooner than I had anticipated. Alternatively, I feel that I would have to seriously question whether or not we have a product-market fit if this does not take off.

Though we haven't opened sign-ups to the public, we demoed the product to a friend and colleague who we knew could benefit from it. She signed up!

Launched a landing page with a brief overview of the product. Included a "request an invitation" form. Got 30 requests in the first week!

We determined our main goals and features of the app. David laid the groundwork for the core functionality and made tons of progress on the feature set and styling. Jo researched genetic counseling licenses in all the states and made lots of spreadsheets of requirements. We landed on a name and designed a logo.

Jo enlisted David's help to design an app to simplify her life when it comes to maintaining her genetic counseling license.