Spot Me

• spot-me.net (dead now)

• Summer 2018

Spot Me was slated to be a platform where users could easily borrow very small amounts of money. The value hypothesis was that millennials would be willing to pay a small flat fee in order to have a small loan ($10-$200) sent directly to their Venmo.

I talked to 6 customers (not as many as I should have) and found that there definitely were times when they borrowed small amounts of money from a friend. I just needed to find out whether they would rather borrow money from a company (in case they feel embarrassed by asking their friends). I could have asked them about their feelings regarding borrowing from a company, but most people do not know what they want so their answer would not be very useful.

I decided to use a smoke screen MVP coupled with a simpler version of the app. I had a landing page set up, posted fliers around NYC advertising the site, and observed the conversion rate. For users who signed up and I believed were trustworthy, I emailed them to initiate the process of receiving a micro loan. Since I were so new, there was a significant issue of trust; I could not concoct a way to honestly circumvent this issue, so that may have impacted results.

I had a conversion rate of 0.8% (Keep in mind this was from an ad that was randomly posted around NYC.) Out of those who converted, I emailed four to begin the process of borrowing money. None of them responded to the email or follow-up. This could have been because they signed up just out of curiosity initially. Email is also not the most trustworthy method of communication when compared to phone.

Minimum viable products are usually viewed as scrappy (although for those who adhere strictly to the scooter-then-care MVP ideology would argue that MVPs should never be scrappy). This becomes an issue when your product revolves around something in which trust is essential. I should have gone with an MVP where we could easily establish that trust, such as a booth at an event on my own college campuses. My MVP never met those trust needs, so I are not sure if people did not reply because of trust or lack of interest in the product. This idea still could have merit, but I researched more and did not want to deal with the legal struggles of this industry so I moved on.