Why I'm a Product Marketer: Customer discovery, acquisitions, and product launches (Oh My!)

2017-2019

Customer discovery, acquisitions, and product launches (Oh My!)

This is the time period when my vision to become a product marketer became clear. Getting first-hand experience working alongside extraordinarily talented engineers and product leaders at Sphero was the cherry on top to my realization that the entrepreneurship mindset and the academic side of product marketing are almost a complete match.

Customer discovery was the first tangible crossover between the entrepreneurship and product marketing world. And I really love customer discovery. Here’s how I turned a few peculiar orders into a thriving customer segment that led to our acquisition by Sphero 9 months later (and our product landing on display at every Apple store in the US.)

A year after graduating from college with a degree in entrepreneurship, I helped to launch a product on Kickstarter called Specdrums. It’s a highly innovative product that people need to see before believing. Here’s my favorite 1-minute product explainer video.

In 30 days we raised $188k and won the Red Bull Launchpad competition, then won $75,000 from the University of Colorado’s New Venture Challenge (an elevator pitch competition).

During the campaign, we noticed that a couple of music educators placed orders, so I quickly included messaging for them on our campaign page and began contacting those educators to uncover how our product might provide value to them.

From there I contacted more local educators and potential influencers. Each of these relationships proved critical to developing the market. After the campaign, I warmed them up to be on camera while we talked. And I was able to generate critical testimonial assets for our pre-sales marketing efforts and attracted more champions across the nation.

Below is a compilation of many testimonial interviews filmed, spanning musicianship, parenting, STEM education, and music education.

In producing units to fulfill Kickstarter orders, we ordered additional units so we could begin pre-sales on our website a few months later. From releasing testimonials as a campaign on our social media accounts, we soon had more demand from educators than we could fulfill due to the unexpectedly large average order sizes.

Our pre-sales efforts soon had to be put on hold until we caught up on existing orders around three months later. We continued to market ourselves to educators on social media and continued to receive formal requests to buy our product from schools. We had a lot of what I would call good problems when it came to demand from there on out due to a market segment we never anticipated.

At that point, we knew we needed to scale production faster than we knew how in order to meet demand. Our success with teachers was a key selling point for Sphero, as they transitioned their company's focus away from licensed goods and doubled down on education. The acquisition was made official in May 2018.

Within the next 12 months, we redeveloped the hardware, created an additional companion application, reinvented our packaging, and more. About six months later, we launched the product at CES 2019 winning Best in Show by WIRED Magazine. Shortly thereafter, I assisted in the launch of Sphero’s newest educational robotic on Kickstarter which raised $1 million. Before departing Sphero, Specdrums was featured in an interactive display at each of Apple’s retail stores.