(2023-01-11) Cutler TBM352 Real-World Learning Review DoubleLoop

John Cutler: TBM 3/52: Real-World Learning Review. This week I will try something new, and I hope you like it. As some of you know, I am an investor in DoubleLoop.com, an early-stage startup based here in the United States. I was chatting recently with Daniel Schmidt (the founder/CEO), and he said he wanted to do a learning review session for DoubleLoop and share it with the world.

• really this is using themselves as a case study of using the tool
  • are they too early-stage to be like their customers? What stage are their customers? Someone who had both a product manager and product analyst is probably not early stage.
  • their numbers seem so low (though hard to see clearly), are the correlations meaningful? I guess as long as their positive...

Here is some quick context about DoubleLoop before jumping in: DoubleLoop is SaaS tool for modeling business drivers with data-connected maps. They've raised $2.8M so far. While they have early traction, they're iterating on their product and positioning to create strong product/market to raise a series A about a year from now. (metrics)

Here’s an outline of our conversation. Feel free to jump around or watch the whole thing.

• using DoubleLoop as the mapping tool for discussion
  • some discussion about support qualitative themes/inputs/drivers as first step/layer of mapping, not having to settle on specific metrics on first pass

(Start by looking at map from 6wks ago.)

• Dan notes where the North Star Metric fell short in reflecting customer value. ("companies with mapped strategies")
• was turning on data integrations an input to strategic mapping, or downstream?
• He notes he didn’t think he was going the “full mile” to determine if they were solving a customer problem. (just using the tool doesn't guarantee success (Bad-Ass))

Please show us your current map

The new map is part of a strategic reset:

• Embraced complexity in the map (don't over-simplify)
• North Star Metric is “way harder to grow.” ("companies with data-connected custom maps")
• funnel-ratio metrics (he calls them 'rates')
  • seems to treat all of them as parallel rather than serial/funnel
  • which makes it harder to pick a bottleneck to focus on
• *Zeroing in on the product analyst persona (because they have access to the data, and understand how to model, more than product managers (ugh how sad))
• Using services to understand the customer challenge deeply. (problem discovery, increase Bad-Ass rate)
  • trick: avoiding becoming a consulting firm - this service is meant to learn more from customers to lead to better materials, ChatGPT prompts, etc. - not do it forever.
  • they offered this for-free for awhile, but had too many requests to do it well.
• they use ShortCut as their issue tracker tool; need to reconcile actual-work with map

The final row of “solution” bets. (priorities for next 6wks) Top 2-3 assumptions, 2-3 risk areas. (31:59)

• Dan digs into the “strategy services.” “We have to get good at helping customers model their business strategy.” He feels like this is key bottleneck. Need to be trusted advisor?
• John: what's the biggest risk/leap? Dan: Data connected companies.
  • is the issue that people don't have it? Or that they don't care enough to do the work?
  • does operational-db qualify as "warehouse"? Or does only something like Looker/Tableau count?
• Is the value prop too abstract? "Are you just re-building OKRs?" Is this system a way to find better OKRs? Are OKRs along the right solution?

Goal setting! (41:17)

• New map! It is hard to set goals (OKR-deadlines)
• Dan has limited experience with these metrics
• It will take some time to figure out if these metrics are moveable
• The goal is to explore levers! (aka we don't know what the bottleneck is)
• Qualitative goal: Do sessions. Learn from customers.