Fail Fast: a case study

Fail Fast – E-commerce browser extension startup

“How can you fail fast?” I asked Lisa.

Lisa (name changed to protect privacy), a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School, had booked a meeting with me to discuss next steps regarding a startup she’s pursuing. The concept is: an internet browser extension that tells retail grocery customers the amount of emissions they’re offsetting by choosing lower-emissions products such as tofu instead of beef.

Lisa appeared nonplussed. After all, I was here to help her succeed, not help her fail. 

“You have a good business case for your the browser extension,” I said, “or, it SEEMS good. But what relatively low-effort things can you do to make sure that if this is going to fail, it fails fast?”

I told her the story of Tony Hsieh, the founder of online shoe-store Zappos. Before Hsieh even purchased a single shoe, he built the website and tried to sell shoes. In other words, he sold a product before he owned it. He wanted to assess demand before purchasingcommitting his limited cash to a stock of shoes.

Similarly, I suggested to Lisa, we should come up with some actionable steps to determine how her startup could fail fast. There was no point in building an entire browser extension if there wouldn’t be demand for it.

So, we came up with some next steps, which Lisa will put into practice.