Challenge
A FinTech startup had experienced incredible growth in their first few years by being first to market with a new financial service for small businesses, but the need to diversify their product portfolio was becoming increasingly urgent.
The executive team had a strong hypothesis that the data they had on their existing customers allowed them to offer tailored financial products better than any traditional bank. But the possibilities were endless…
Which financial products were the most viable to launch with?
Which customers represented the biggest opportunity?
And how did the customer experience need to change to help small business owners choose from a range of solutions, instead of just one?
Leadership was stuck debating what the future product should be, but didn't have a strong business case behind it. Our client asked Amplify to make sense of all the options, and define a clear product and business strategy for their next phase of growth.
Our Process
What was unique about this project was that it required solving for ambiguity on multiple levels, all at once. There was no existing product or precedent within the organization, so we got to start with a mostly blank slate.
The Amplify team set out to define:
- A segmentation of current small business customers, including needs, barriers to growth and attitudes toward credit products and financial tools.
- Prioritization of the financial products the platform could offer
- A platform value proposition that would resonate with the needs of the target small business owner
- A product strategy that would seamlessly guide customers from using an initial financial product to deeper and broader engagement over time.
Traditionally, a design team would approach these questions sequentially - define the customers and needs first, prototype and test product solutions, synthesize the value prop, etc. In this project, we didn’t have the luxury of time - the client asked for all the above in under two months.
We used Lean Customer Development to start talking to customers and testing rough concepts on day one - and answer questions on several levels at once (read Noel's breakdown of the LCD process).
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Our clients say that the biggest unlock of the project was the distinction between two customer types - the Self Reliant Small Business Owner and the Growth-Minded Entrepreneur - who have opposite attitudes toward credit and growth, and who have different approaches to outside advice.
Two distinct business and product opportunities quickly emerged:
- Help Small Business Owners stabilize and plan for growth with access to on-demand financing for emergencies, and immediately actionable insights to stabilize their cash flow.
- Help Entrepreneurs scale their growth to match their ambitions with flexible financing that is integrated into the platforms they already use.
We helped our clients size both markets and the relative opportunities, make a decision on who to target, and prioritize the financial product and platform features needed to begin work on their MVP.
In this case, Amplify was the outside catalyst that could synthesize all the noise, and facilitate a decision on how to move forward.
