Ep 40: Family startup myAgeTechlab.com, part 5 - Attracting Supply & Demand

Upside/Downside is a podcast about value creation and the strategies finance and business leaders can use to grow profits and cash flow.  I'm your host, Matt Cooley. 

This is our fifth episode in a series about establishing myAgeTechlab.com, a family side hustle bringing AgeTech to people who want to age in place in their own homes. 

This time, Liam and I share how we intend to attract suppliers and customers to our AgeTech lab experience.  We outline our value proposition for both supply and demand, and wonder where were the uncles this episode?

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I wish you the best on your value creation journey and if you find yourself stuck or in need of advice, please reach out via the contact form at Upside/Downside podcast today!

Matt

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome back, everyone. This is Matt Cooley, host of Upside Downside, where we explore value creation and how the actions we take in business drive profits and cash flow. I'm a unit CFO for a large tech company and a nerd for value creation and how it impacts companies and everyday people. We're in the midst of our series about starting a family side hustle that helps people age in their own homes through the use of age tech solutions. Joining me today is my teenage son, Liam, who spent the summer researching and building the foundation for this business. Today, we're talking about attracting supply and demand. Welcome, Liam. What's up, honey? I'm doing good. What about you? Things are going great. Glad to be collaborating, as we've said before. So we have this middleman business model, Liam, that we've been talking about here on the podcasts, where a set of curated solutions ideally aligns with the challenges that our customers want to solve as they age in place. And customers will physically interact with those solutions in our lab experience and ultimately make a decision whether they want to purchase something, driving cash flow and hopefully profits, right? Yeah, of course. So it's early days, but we're pretty sure we'll continuously be balancing this portfolio of supply and demand. In fact, I think we joked about juggling skills in a prior episode with your uncle. Yeah, we did. We did, right? So let's talk about a couple things here regarding attracting supply and demand. What did you learn about potential suppliers over the summer?

SPEAKER_01: 1:36

So something that I learned is that there's a lot of companies out there and not everybody has what we need to be a successful business. But there's also many vendors out there that look promising for our company and our overall business strategy.

SPEAKER_00: 1:51

Yeah, in fact, I think ultimately we looked at close to 700 different companies from different sources and curating that down to what we think is going to work was, you know, you did almost all that work was pretty crazy, actually. Yeah, it took a lot of time. It sure did. How do we use that research about suppliers to entice them to participate in our H-Tech lab experience? I mean, why should they care

SPEAKER_01: 2:17

about us? I mean, they should care, you know, because they're part of like a portfolio for our business and it kind of makes them special and, you know, puts them like in the light. And they'll also get a direct interactions with customers. And, you know, like, because many people will be seeing their products, which I think is helpful. And, you know, very easy onboarding from us. I mean, really. We're going to be easy to work with, aren't we? Yeah, we're going to be pretty easy to work with. I mean, like no, you know, weird, extra little like details that people can't see in the contract or anything like that, you know, just kind of just like, yeah, just straight up. And we're also going to accelerate, you know, these businesses sales, I think by a lot, especially with the hands-on and eyes-on their products. I think more people want

SPEAKER_00: 3:05

to buy their stuff. Okay. Well, those sound like compelling reasons to work with us on the supply side. That's great. If we switch over to the demand side, so we're testing the lab experience in New Jersey. So it's inherently local at this stage. What were some of the approaches that you researched for attracting customers? So

SPEAKER_01: 3:27

I actually researched this topic like a lot during in the summer. And I came up with three main things that we have to focus on. So number one is networking and interaction with other organizations that will help us with becoming part of the community and overall, just like good interactions between the people. And the next thing is to encourage lab attendees to bring a friend or a family member in order to spread the word of mouth, which is also very important. I like that a lot. Yeah. And last but not least, you know, like the very obvious one, which is a good advertising, whether that's a captive email or a newsletter to keep customers in touch with like what's going on and to show that we obviously care about them and want them to be doing well.

SPEAKER_00: 4:16

And there's a lot that we can do in that advertising slash promotion space. A lot of it doesn't cost money. It costs time. But that's going to be we have a pretty long list. of things that we think we can do there. Do we have a good feeling yet what will convince customers to actually come and sign up for the lab experience?

SPEAKER_01: 4:39

Yeah, I mean, I think overall we have a pretty good feeling here. I mean, we don't really know for sure yet, but I think right now we have a great model going into our first in-person lab.

SPEAKER_00: 4:48

Yeah, and this is all an experiment and we'll find out. I guess like any startup, right, you have lots of plans and ideas and you have to go see if they work. And

SPEAKER_01: 4:59

sometimes They go out the window.

SPEAKER_00: 5:00

Right. And so we're ready for all of that. We've recruited a few of your friends to be the lab techs along with you. So you and your friends will actually, you know, from school will actually be demoing the solutions and interacting with the customers in our labs. I think that's going to be a strong demand generator. What do you think? Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 5:26

I think so. And having, you know, like, hiring other people who are already good with tech gives the lab like a good energy to answer, you know, like any necessary questions that anybody has and keeping lab attendees like open to learning new information and, you know, like being excited about this new technology that could potentially help them,

SPEAKER_00: 5:46

so. Yeah, so we'll see how that goes as well. We've taken a lot of feedback on whether that's a good strategy or not, but as Uncle Joel said, you know, perseverance and don't let the naysayers hold you back. You know, we're going to find out and we'll adjust if that's not the right approach, but that's what we're thinking at this point. So listen, that was a good discussion and this is a fascinating project to be working on with you, my son. So I really appreciate your efforts and you're doing a great job. Thank you. And by the way, why aren't your uncles with us on this episode today? Don't worry about it. Probably like doing research or something. Yeah, research. Where are those scofflaws? Oh, geez. To our listeners, I want to thank you for joining us on this value conversation. creation journey. And next episode, we're going to have a progress report for you on the AgeTech Lab startup and how we're doing in the road ahead. So we will see you next time. See you.