In this talk, I go over our product process from inception to killing the product, all using Customer Development.

1. The Murder of
SEO Grader
Why I killed a product idea.

2. Conduct
Questions OK
Raise Hand

3. Who Am I?
Local Entrepreneur
1530 Technologies & A Part-Time CTO
Organizer Lean Startup Circle
Lean Proponent Since 2003

4. 1530 Background
Sports Analytics & Publishing

5. Creating Findable Data
Buzz: REST, Content Negotiation, URI Dereferencing

6. Follow SEO Best
Practices
By Hand: Not Scalable

7. Solution?!?!?
Automated SEO Verification!

8. SEO Grader Was Born
Codifies SEO Best Practices for Regression Testing.

9. Light Bulb
Couldn’t Other People Use This?

10. Assumption #1
There exists a group of users technically proficient, but
unaware of SEO Practices.

11. Assumption #2
SEO Experts needed a tool for the low hanging fruit for
their clients.

12. Assumption #3
Content producers need SEO help, but can’t pay for
SEO Consultant.

13. MVP! MVP! MVP!
Throw up a site, a survey and let the validation flow!
Great name: SEO Grader
Lots of organic traffic + AdWords =
Customer Development Goodness

14. Well, it flowed.
But not the way we expected.

15. Assumption #1
There exists a group of users technically proficient, but
unaware of SEO Practices.

16. Wrong.
Technically proficient people are DIY’ers
Non-Technically proficient people pay the above.

17. Assumption #2
SEO Experts needed a tool for the low hanging fruit for
their clients.

18. Wrong.
SEO Consultants were less than pleased in reducing
their total number of billable hours.

19. Assumption #3
Content producers need SEO help, but can’t pay for
SEO Consultant.

20. Wrong.
See #1: Either they have their tech people or they pay
them.

21. Assumption #4
We could automate the low hanging fruit validation &
verification.

22. Wrong.
People wanted that stuff for free.
People wanted us to fix their site.
Existing tools ‘Good Enough’.

23. What To Do?
All of our assumptions were worse then wrong, there
was nowhere to go.

24. Pivot?
Not an immediate option for two reasons.

25. #1 We’re not SEO
Experts
That more advanced knowledge would need to come
from somewhere.

26. #2 Advanced SEO is
hard
Once you get past the things people didn’t want to pay
for, it’s more Art than Science.

27. Conclusion?
Take old yeller out back.
Continue to refine SEO Grader internally.
Focus on high value, not cheapness.
Try to develop more niche based tools
( Semantics, NLP, etc... )

28. Cost
All of this cost about $500 and was conducted over a
month.

29. Questions?
I love hearing from people, so please reach out:
Email: gcaprio@1530technologies.com
Twitter: gcaprio