I recently partnered with TK Newman on her “wed-tech” startup, Hustle Your Bustle (HYB) and have been working with her on business models and strategy.   

HustleYourBustle.com is a high-end wedding fashion resale website that enables owners of high-end wedding fashion (starting with the key ingredient, dresses) to be connected with brides who want high-end wedding fashion items at a reduced price, without having to filter through unrelated or irrelevant items.

One of the best things about it has been utilizing the Customer Development process that I teach in my classes and feeling what it is like to do it myself.  One really strong value proposition has already been identified and validated for a few of the customer segments (it is a multi-sided market: it doesn’t work without the sellers AND the buyers), so we are testing others and further testing key partners and revenue models. 

I was actually lucky enough to get to snag some time with entrepreneur Jim Hornthal last week in Berkeley after we spoke on a panel about teaching Lean Launchpad (he taught it to undergrads at Princeton…I’ll post more soon).  Jim offered nothing short of what I felt to be brilliant partner and revenue ideas…but of course, they simply need to be tested.  So I am adding them to the canvas to test!

I will post some of our learnings over the next few months and share what the process was like for me, as a co-founder, not an instructor; but for now, here are some thoughts I have about embarking on customer development with HYB: 

The good things:

•  It was not my idea…I am not an original founder; which allows me to take the process a little less personally because the idea is not as close to me.
• HYB already has a lot of customers to reach out to and test and having launched in October, there is already feedback that can be utilized.
• TK and I have great mentors to guide us through the process.
• The opportunity is growing.  The wedding industry is large (est. well over 2 million weddings per year in the US alone) and the average price paid for a dress is $1,187 (and is increasing), with 1.6 million couples using the internet to plan their weddings.

The challenges:

• I am not the original founder – I cannot simply perform the customer development and then tell the TK…she must participate.
• Customers are almost all virtual…and a big potential market is international (makes face-to-face a little more challenging).
• The startup launched in October…so it is beyond idea concept (pivots become more challenging to swallow…see my last post).

I’ll keep you updated!  Until then, check out our site and if you are in one of our customer segments (bride, former bride, hopeful bride, boutique owner, indie dress designer), or another segment that sees value please reach out and give me your feedback! sp@hustleyourbustle.com

I’ll also blog about the January LLP conference shortly.  It was an incredible experience…as always, and met some great entrepreneurs and educators, including this fella.

Twitter: @HYBDresses

@skpeck