Turning Everyday Problems Into Stand-Out Startups with Entrepreneur Growth Coach & Startup Founder Patrick Ranval

In this episode, we dive into the heart of entrepreneurship, exploring the journey from initial ideas to successful startups. We discuss the importance of innovation, iteration, and understanding your customers’ needs. You’ll learn how to navigate the startup world, create a unique value proposition, and develop a product that truly resonates with your audience. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your business model, this conversation offers actionable insights and practical advice to help you move forward. Join us as we break down the steps to turning problems into impactful solutions and building a business that stands out in today’s competitive landscape.

Topics Covered:

•The importance of innovation in entrepreneurship

•Steps to take an idea from concept to a viable product

•The value of customer discovery and iterative design

•How to create a unique value proposition for your business

•Practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and startup founders

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Transcript

0:47

Welcome Patrick. Hi, Kaylan. So just to kick things off, tell us a little bit about your journey, your background and how you got into entrepreneurship in the first place. Yeah. So I'm interested in young businesses and new businesses. I worked a lot of different places. I worked at Midtown Market when it was very early. Piper's when they were starting up. I, Spent the five years prior to what I'm doing now working at what actually is my mother in law's farm Magney Legacy Ridge in Princeton. And they were sort of growing a a organic vegetable marketplace, an online marketplace. And that's actually the point at which my entrepreneurial journey kind of intersected Sprocket. Because one of the challenges that I saw in organic farming was the record keeping. And I applied to a several iterations ago West Kentucky Innovation Challenge. And won it. And then we went and built out a product that became Seed Story. Which is a agricultural record keeping app for farmers. I did go through the process of building out a product iterating it and continuing to iterate it on. We're still working on, you know, new versions of seed story to this day. So that that process for me began in 2021. So now I am here in 2024 trying to pay it forward to the next cohort of entrepreneurs to go through the challenge. And tell us about your role here at Sprocket as Entrepreneur Growth Coach. Yeah, so I'm one of Sprocket's Entrepreneur Growth Coaches. And that looks like meeting with businesses as a free service. That's part of what our imperative as an organization is. to, to meet with fledgling businesses or businesses that are trying to grow new tech initiatives and help them develop. So I will schedule meetings with people and then we'll talk. We'll I'll do essentially a, a needs assessment and kind of speak through what resources we have, what connections we might be able to make for a particular business that will help them grow to the next stage. And we're just always as an organization trying to assist you with moving one, one foot forward, whether that looks like a user acquisition for you, whether that looks like getting your revenue model worked out your, your product design, it's always just one, one foot. One foot and then the next foot. Yeah, and I love that you work with people and meet them wherever they're at, too. So even people who, like, want to have an idea or they have a lot of ideas they don't know which one to pursue, even people at the very beginning stages of entrepreneurship can come have a session with you and find out what their next step is. Yeah, I think that's the coolest thing about Sprocket is that we do interface with businesses that are at all steps of the process. We will take anybody seriously from the, you know, person that walks through our door and has the notion of I, you know, want to start a tech company but I don't know where to start to you know, all the way up to companies that are making millions of dollars in revenue with, you know you know, digitally enabled products of some sort. So that's, that's really the cool thing about Sprocket is we have that ladder all the way up. And how would you define a tech company? Because I know a lot of people think of Sprocket, they know we're an innovation hub, and that feels like something out of Silicon Valley, but it's really not. Every, every business can have a digital component, right? Yeah, I mean, certainly in 2024 even businesses that are traditional brick and mortars have a need for a, a web presence, if nothing else, so that they can be found. On search engines or, you know, say you have a restaurant and you want to be able to be found from the interstate Anything that's digitally enabled. So we do stick to the the tech component of that. We're probably not going to help you come up with your fall menu, but any business that needs assistance at the, the point at which we're an idea interfaces with the digital landscape or there being a technology component to it, that's, that's really what we love helping to grow. I'll help people come up with their fall menus. If we can taste it, maybe for free samples. Yeah. Reflecting on your journey in entrepreneurship, what do you think are the key components of the entrepreneurial spirit or mindset that you think every up and coming or aspiring founder should have or start nurturing? You know, I've thought a lot about this, Kaylan, and the one thing that I, there's actually not many similarities between entrepreneurs. You get people from all walks of life. I was talking to somebody that was a priest this morning. We've, you know, another individual that's relocated from Silicon Valley and all, all people, all walks of life can be entrepreneurial. But the one thing that unites everyone that's an entrepreneur is the belief that things can be done better. And that's it. That is what I think encompasses. entrepreneurial spirit, the belief that something can be done better and that I'm the person to spearhead that effort. And how do you go about, how do you make the, the transition between knowing something can be done better and then having an idea from that? So that's, that's actually the piece that Sprocket, and particularly this innovation challenge that we're running is, is really going to be the most helpful in. You know, my experience with the record keeping, we knew it was a need. We knew it was, was something that was complicated for people that, that really just want to grow vegetables to have to keep track of, of all this data in order to achieve their organic certification. And, and that was kind of the problem that I came in with. And I. You know, personally went through all sorts of different iterations of what a solution to that problem might look like everything from it was going to be a, you know, a game where you put your records into you know, a very traditional SAS platform, you know, looks like Excel or whatever. And what we came to eventually for our minimum viable product was, was kind of this. that drew inspiration from both these very radically different visions of how record keeping might look and took some of the good UI UX elements. That's user interface and user experience. That's how you feel when you're using an application, like how you enter information into it and combine those into one product that did the boring spreadsheet y record keeping that farmers needed, but presented it in a more pleasant to interact with way. There's a lot of colors in the application that help you know exactly where you are in each component of it. There's almost like a, a game like design to the menus. In fact, some of the some of the menus in the seed story app are directly inspired by the menu system of Pokemon. Yeah, yeah. Fun, fun fact. But you know, really paying attention to what, what software do people like engaging with? What, what makes sense to people? And can we kind of re imagine what. It looks like to engage with a, with an app. I think that's a perfect example of what innovation is because innovation is taking something that like works and then sidestepping it to like work in a different way. So from the Pokemon app and the Pokemon design, like, well, how could this menu look like if it was for my seed story app? Right, right. And, and where can we draw inspiration from that we might, and the heart of innovation is you know, really taking something from somewhere and, and bringing it to a new context somewhere else where it can make sense. You know, I have a, an uncle that once told me there's, there's no such thing as, as innovation. Everything is just, You know, rehashed ideas and that actually really stuck with me and it sounds it sounds very negative, but, but actually it's, it's not, it's, it's how can we take things and remix them into you know, solutions and take something from somewhere fun, like the, you know, the game space and bring it to something dry, like record keeping and maybe make that experience more pleasant for the people that have to engage with it. That's awesome. And I think what's encouraging about that concept too is that ideas can come from anywhere. And I think a lot of maybe aspiring entrepreneurs might get stuck in that idea stage because they're so married to this one idea that they had. It was such a good idea, but if it doesn't happen, then they'll never have another idea. That's not true because innovation can happen everywhere. As long as we're always iterating, walk us through the process of innovation of taking an idea from just an idea to an actual business ready concept that will learn in the innovation challenge. Yeah, so we have a road map for that. That is what we're teaching the innovation challenge to. There's, there's lots of different road maps that people use We are very much away from the traditional thick 50 page packet of business plan. Yeah, I know we're all missing that one. And, and really onto how do we fit the idea on a sheet of paper? How do we address the core elements of what a business is, which is to say what is the problem that the business is solving? What are the customer segments that are experiencing this problem? What's our solution look like? So this is kind of crafting a minimum viable product, which is the idea we'll talk a lot about or, or even better, a minimum lovable product. Something that that solves the problem that people want to engage with that get them excited. What the revenue streams are this one is very important. How the business makes money, how it, it creates enough value for customers that they would trade their hard earned money for your solution. And Then the go to market strategy. And this one's tricky too, of how do you get your product in front of the potential customers you have, the, the people that you want to, to find your solution and love it. And then how it all works. And, and of course the, the formal entity that the company lives in. And. I want to talk a little bit about the last one because I see it a lot in the coaching, but people get very, very hung up on, Oh, how do I, how do I craft my formal entity? How did you, I need to be a LLC or a C corp or whatever. And they get stuck in that step, which is really the most boring and frankly, easily solved part of owning a business and you know, really the core finding that solution to a problem that real humans, real people are experiencing and delivering them that solution. That's, that's the stuff that we need to be focusing on. The, the finding the problem solution fit for customers is what's important. So what are some of the commonalities that successful companies have that you've seen? And how does the challenge kind of help train future companies in those things? So, the most successful companies I've seen in the tech startup sphere seems like everybody's got a little bit of a chip on their shoulder. I don't know a better way to put it, but they're, they're, they're hungry for getting out there and putting their solution in the world. Maybe it's maybe it's out of spite for the, you know, people that told them they couldn't do it, or you know, maybe it's just cause they're, they're driven in that way. But it does take effort and it does take dedication to put yourself out there to, to be vulnerable in the sense of I've created a thing that you know, people may or may not want. And we take steps to try to reduce that uncertainty. We do customer discovery interviews. We do test marketing, some of the principles of MVP and iterative design to, to try to put out lower stakes versions of something so that we can assess whether there are. Customer needs, whether there's, there's demand for this product beforehand but nevertheless there is, is still a component of of, of risk to it, of, of just putting yourself out there of trying something that's not been done before and seeing if it works. Mm hmm. And what better way to step into that, you know, out of the, just the idea phase, which can be super cozy to be in because you haven't started anything yet. There's the hope, the dream, the fear isn't there. Everything's on the horizon, but then stepping out of that super risky, but, but what better way to do that than stepping into the challenge and coming into a community who's doing that with you? Yeah, absolutely. Under the guidance of coaches. Yeah. I mean, I think that's really the huge value that the innovation challenges is offering of one. There's people that are going to be teaching the courses and featured in the interviews that have done every step of this process. And you know, people think that, oh, West Kentucky is such a we're so rural. There's no way that, you know, anyone would ever start a tech company or a digitally enabled company here. And that's my chip on the shoulder. We're, we're trying to prove them wrong. And you know, show the world that the West Kentucky has people that are just as smart as anywhere else. And we're going to create the opportunity for people with good ideas to get those ideas out there. And build something to really change the world. That's inspiring. So you talk about the process, the process of iterating and constantly refining, researching, doing customer discovery. This is a process that is proven. It works. It helps create innovation. It helps us take an idea to a business ready concept. And we talk a lot in this sprocket space about trusting that process. And that's one thing that we're wanting to train on, but what does it look like if. If, if you don't trust that process and if you have an idea and you just want to get out there as quick as possible and you kind of skip some of these core parts like customer discovery, like testing your hypothesis, like creating an MVP, like understanding your unique value proposition, which kind of seems like tedious groundwork, but it's a process we should trust. What does it look like to skip all those things versus trusting the process? You will make mistakes no, no doubt. And there's things, there's, there's things that you will be offered in the entrepreneurial process as advice that is good advice that you're not ready to hear. And I, I encountered a lot of this with seed story. One of the things that I was real insistent on with the first seed story is that a mobile application, something that people could download and put on their phones was the, the right way to go about it, that we were going to be in the play store and the Apple app store. I had a mentor at the time that said, Oh, but don't you want to think about just doing a web app? The, you know, the, the Apple store, the play store, they, they take a pretty big percentage of revenue. And you know, there's some consideration. I said, no, no, no, no. The, the legitimacy is it. I want to be in the app store that makes it a real. in my mind. And we went through that process and now some three years later the current version of seed story I'm working on is developed to be purely web. And I'm, I'm just now reaching the point where I can hear that advice is good advice. And, you know, should I have taken it at the time? Maybe, but I hadn't experienced it. Firsthand and I wasn't ready to hear it and there'll be stuff like that. Like you almost, this will be let's get messy with the answer. This will be unpopular, but there's, there's good advice that you will ignore. And that's just part of the process. And you're going to try to do it a different way. And you'll find out why, you know, what somebody suggested was actually you should have listened to him. But there's also other stuff that sometimes people are wrong about. You know, and, and you just have to find your way as an entrepreneur, but that trusting the process that having at least a framework to go by, having some safety in that, the, the way we think about iterative design, the way we think about crafting a minimum viable product, a minimum lovable product, that these things, Help us avoid costly and very high risk mistakes. The process is a structure that is to assist you in creating a business efficiently. What is some advice that you wish you had gotten at the beginning stages? Don't be afraid of your competitors in the space. Actively seek those out and really do some deep dive questions of have, have the competitor products solved my problem. And and for me the, The process of designing a, an application was, was very important. One of the things that I've gone back and done in my entrepreneurial process is, is learn more about the technology that is underneath it. And I feel like if I had done more of the technical research first, and you don't, You don't need to, to know necessarily how to build an application, but you need to know about what the pieces of technology it touches do. I, I wish that I had had more of that knowledge going in. And I feel like learning about some of those technology pieces, is what's important. What do people mean when they say a SQL database? You know, what is a large language model? Like what can be done with these technologies? I feel like if I had a better done more research on that, then I would have been able to, to guide the development process a little more efficiently. That's me as a, as a very product driven person. Other founders are, you know, very marketing driven, very you know, business revenue driven. I, I lean more into the product space. So, so that advice was good for me, but maybe not for everyone else. So What advice would you give to an aspiring founder or entrepreneur who is sitting there with an idea right now and they're Kind of nervous about joining the challenge or about taking that next step? Yeah, well, absolutely join the challenge. That's a no brainer. Like, the, the format that we've set up with the hybrid schedule where we have the video modules and then the optional in person work days where, where you get to, to meet the cohort in person. That's just an awesome format. It, it's the perfect opportunity that has no, stakes to it other than the amount of time that you're going to invest in yourself. To, to do it. You know, the other, the other piece of advice is really to talk to your customers. Talk to the people that you think are going to be your early users, your, your early adopters and really get them excited about. The product and and trying out the product before it's built That's definitely one One thing that was was really a kind of a mistake for the you know first version of seed story We had talked to other Farmers and we'd found Like, oh wow, you know, everybody has this nightmarish web of spreadsheets that they, they use to track their, you know, agricultural records. Like if we could just put it all in one place that was easy to use, they'd love it and be really excited about it. Well, the thing that we didn't find, that we didn't look for was just how attached to the solution that they had created, That these farmers were. So when you ask them like, oh yeah, I've, I've simplified everything and say, oh but like we've already got our database that we built and it works for us and you know the one we built doesn't cost any money. Why would we use yours? And, and that really kind of blindsided me of, but like you know, don't you want to use this cool product that we built? And you know, that, that resistance. So the, the way we've thought about marketing has, has changed somewhat because the people that recognized that they had a problem with this sort of record keeping for the most part had built their own solution for it. So that is that is part of the importance of really getting Into the uncomfortable questions. For for your idea and really putting it through that that trial by fire in your customer interviews. And I don't say that to scare people. I, you know, say that because I wish we'd done more of it. I actually think that research is, is something that can get people held up in the entrepreneurial process. They call the analysis paralysis. There is an element of like, you just have to jump and do like, you just have to do things and you know, research. Yeah, research your competitors, go, go download the, the competing products, go, go eat at the, the other bakeries that are, are doing the type of cupcakes you want to make. However, whatever your business looks like. But don't get so lost in trying to analyze it that, that you don't do it. Talk. Talk to your potential customers, meet those people, get those people excited about your idea before it's even launched and you will wind up with insights that give you a better, more useful product that you just never would have thought of. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. That's so important. And, and, and the speaking to people is so important. Business entirely being successful business is, is building relationships and, you know, line up a partnership for a, a trial. Of your product before you launch it. Be having those conversations. Who's going to be the early adopters? Where are we going to test this thing? Because those are the things, those are the relationships that you can take to your next step of, you know, we did this partnership with the beta version with, you know, such and such organization or this business and so on. And this is why it'll work for you. This is why we feel comfortable charging for it. And what better research than to take your product to your customer and watching them as they bite into it. Yeah. Yeah. Or even a very early version, even the wireframe version of it, even, even your application is a series of note cards that you'd show them what the, the workflow would be like. You know, anything you can do that's low stakes that gets you the same feedback that you'd get from building the expensive product in, you know, much, much less time. There's, and there's so many cool tools out there now for you know, building MVPs. You talk about Figma. Some of these things that create very high fidelity mockups and experiences. What are you most excited about for this year's cohort? I am always excited to engage with anyone that has new ideas. I, this process of entrepreneurship, this process of growing businesses, I said at the beginning of this interview I love working with young businesses. I love working with fledgling ideas things that are just trying to find their way and get off the ground. That's, that's so exciting to me because you don't know how it's going to work out. That's what makes it interesting. And, you know, ideas, people, they never cease to surprise me in what they come up with or how they develop and grow. And we've seen that process here at Sprocket. We've seen underdogs succeed. We've seen, you know, ideas that you would expect to be launched out of of California. Come here and thrive in this ecosystem in the Kentucky entrepreneurial sphere. So yeah, I guess the potential that's that's what I'm looking forward to. So a successful company is maybe less about having the best idea right off the bat, but more about having a good idea, but certain character traits and processes yeah. I mean the, the classic adage. is, you know, it's, it's not great ideas. It's okay ideas with great execution. The, that the execution, the way that you deliver on that idea is actually more important than the idea itself. And I would say that that, that rings true with what I've seen. So. And I ask that because I think a lot of the people who should join the challenge are people who have maybe been toying around with an idea. Maybe they've had it for several years and it comes up and conversations, Oh, I'd love to do this sometime. And they maybe chuckle because they know that they never, it's never going to happen because they're just not an entrepreneur or this, they're not that kind of person or whatever. But I really think that some people will be listening to this and saying, Maybe that idea that I've been thinking about, like, could actually happen, like, what if I could make it happen and I, I just want to impress upon people that it's maybe even less about having the perfect idea, it's not that golden ticket, it's having an okay idea. But you're just like ready to go do it. Yeah. Well, and I think that's the freeing thing about actually having a structure in place. Like the innovation challenge is that when it's just a pipe dream, when it's just living in your head, is this like, yeah, I should do that. You really have no actionable on like, okay, but what do you do for like But really what do you do first? And, and that's what the innovation challenge is there for of like, okay, like you want to do this crazy pipe during, you want to like have a online distribution system for cupcakes. I don't, I don't know. Maybe that's an idea. That one's free if you're listening. But You know, you go out there and we do have this framework, this scaffolding for, okay, this is your first step. You need to find out, like, are there people that want an online order service for cupcakes? And then, you know, you do this next step of like, okay, what's the, you know, the mock up for the website? What's the, how are they going to order those? What, how are we going to distribute them or deliver them or whatever? And, and just step by step, you have this scaffolding for how to approach a, an idea, a pipe dream that lives in your head and, and see if it actually has some legs to stand on its own. And that's, that's, That's awesome because you really don't get that anywhere else, and especially not the level of attention that we're able to give to businesses here in Sprocket. One of the compliments that we've gotten as an organization that gives me the warm fuzzies is we had someone that relocated from Washington state. And they said, you know, I would have been a nobody in Seattle and, you know, here people took me seriously. And that company is on its legs and well on its way. So you know, that's, that's something that we're able to do in the intimate setting of West Kentucky. You know, our little rural area, our corner of the world is, is give businesses the attention that, that they need to, to get up and grow. So this year you're instructing on creating a unique value proposition, MVP design and road mapping. Why is that so critical for startups early on? Yeah, so unique value proposition is all about making sure you are creating something that is legitimately differentiated from the other competitors in the sphere. Okay. There's a lot of people that start businesses. Oh, I don't really have any competitors. And, and that's, if you don't have any competitors, then the really, the reality is there's no market where you're operating. Like you should have competitors. That's a good thing. Sometimes people don't think very laterally about what their competitors are. And what I mean by that is like, One of the valid competitors to, you know, any, say a software product is just like spreadsheets or something like that's a valid. In fact, that's actually one of our worst competitors for seed story or spreadsheets. Yeah. So, you know, you need to think about that. You need to think about your unique value that your company is offering. to customers and the unique value proposition may be that it dials in on a specific segment of customers that other businesses aren't thinking about that this is for you know smaller farms or that this is for I don't know. There's not a sass application for goths or who knows? Like Facebook was just for college students. Yeah. Now it's for literally everybody in the world. Yeah. So, so coming up with, you know, what, what is really unique about the product that you're putting out there? And we're gonna help you work through that as a business to make sure that you are putting out something that's unique. differentiated enough that people are going to want to use it. Yeah. You know, maybe yeah. And a competitor isn't just, you know, somebody else with a business doing the same thing. It's what would somebody do? What, how are they solving the problem without you right now? Yes. Yeah. That's, that's exactly what. I was getting at with the thinking laterally about a problem. That's, that's a good way to put it. Like if you, you got a shirt business. Well, if they don't wear your shirt, what are they going to wear instead? A shirt is a competitor of a dress. Yeah. So when it comes to MVP design, what are some of the key factors that Aspiring entrepreneurs should keep in mind to make sure that they're building something that people need. Yeah, so I I use two expressions when talking about this and and there's The the first is this minimum viable product Does it solve The problem of the customer enough to validate whether it's worth building a better solution or not. Now this is a really good approach and if you've never thought about business in this way, this is absolutely the first place you go. What's, what's the low stakes version of this that we can test with real customers that are experiencing this problem? to get an answer as to whether this is a valid solution to their problem. So that's the first term. The second term is a little newer. In the, as people that used this design paradigm, this idea of minimum viable product can, Iterated through started businesses built products and so on came as this idea of a minimum lovable product that is an M. L. P. The M. V. P. The minimum viable product is very pragmatism driven. There's some industries where where that may be what you need. The M. L. P. Minimum lovable product is what, what tiny product can you make? What, what testable segment can you make that solves a customer problem? Maybe not all their problems, but a customer problem in a way that genuinely delights them to use. And the MLP looks a lot more at the user experience side of it. And I think is ultimately a better paradigm for how to think about this because it's easier to get people to use something that delights them. So there's a cool chart that has a drawing. It's almost like a hierarchy of needs chart for product design. The MVP fills the entire bottom, but puts no effort towards, you know, how it looks, how it feels to use the MLP takes a corner and gives design consideration to how does it feel to use and maybe takes less of a scope of, of problem solving, but more of a, if we filled out this pyramid all the way, would you use it? And this will make a lot more sense in the course module. And I hope we talk a lot more about it cause it's something that I love. If you could leave entrepreneurs with one takeaway from your experience or the upcoming challenge, what would it be? Just try it. Like, like literally, what do you have to lose? Just like literally talk to people, find customers, find their problems. Present a solution and see what sticks. Join the challenge. Just, just do it. It'll be fun here. Yeah. And if you want to meet with me specifically to, to talk about a business idea or even just talk out whether the innovation challenge is a good fit for you or whether you know, we had some other resources that might benefit you or your business. Find, find me on the, I have an idea form link on the sprocket website and yeah, hope to see you soon. And I'll link that below. All right. Thanks Patrick.