Service Procured: Qx Audit
Primary Concerns: Lack of product adoption, Investor seen as Meddler
Time to Read:
Company Overview:
A healthcare SAAS startup in the US focused on providing remote patient management services for nurses conducting home visits and care centre’s managing their lone workers.
The product offered features such as geo check-in for staff members, work schedule, patient log containing media, activity and vitals that can be sync’d with their medical practise or insurance provider directly as well as do’s and don’t related to the patient such as allergies, intolerances and more!
The Challenge
In its early stages, the company raced ahead quickly releasing its product into the market in an attempt to capture early engagement, however the desire to impress prospects and investors failed. This occurred for a period of almost 12 months in which the engineering team delivered feature after feature to create a more ‘complete product’.
The board was happy, the investors were seeing delivery, the sales team was happy, there was enough light traction to keep pressure off management. However customers weren’t really using the product citing we haven’t had the time yet to the extent for some a year had passed. This was reported up to the board as if this were due to not having a complete product, the board understood and agreed to provide a future seed extension when required.
However one investor had his doubts, he is thee investor that wants to play and use the product himself, he was tired of seeing similar repetitive demo’s backed up by slide decks with big words and revenue growth similar of boba tea cafe and had invested believing in the mission and team.
He had a small token at stake and often found his concerns were just set aside by the board director who paid much of his attention to the two funds also on the table represented by their most junior possible analysts along with his pals the other shareholders.
The investor continued his pursuit of the product and found the more he dug the more he found the product could be outperformed by the use google sheets, and google form for the most part. Continuing to raise his concerns he was outcast by the CEO as a stakeholder bias towards his own sector and being told he everything is delivered as an MVP till there was further traction for the feature.
As time went on and the 12 month mark approached post launch, the company had lost all the customers it had acquired either before renewal or on renewal raising concern in retrospect and leaving challenges open
- The investors concerns labeled as subjective.
- The rest of the board not understanding what good likes like
- Everything had to be an MVP due to best practise.
- Controls such as UX and QA resources were already employed but failing.
- Actions such as switching out the entire engineering team bared no fruit
The above challenges led to the product in general being of low quality with a poor user experience and a very dissatisfied board resulting in a chaotic founder.
The Investors Intervention
Fate had better plans, and in all hands for another startup I and the investor met where we discussed product in general advise what to look for as an investor in a team i.e.what the right person is for this stage of a company and as the description of the situation unfolded it became all the more apparent an objective assessment of the product was needed. At which point we agreed to conduct an initial Qx Audit, (Quality and Experience Audit) that is consumable by himself the board and the leadership team to provide insight into both the technology and market risk they face.
Over a period of a fortnight a complete Qx Audit and its accompanying report was formulated, this consisted of a complete assessment of core user flows, their defect rate, their experience rate.
Key Findings:
A number of findings we’re presented with some comparative examples of products in the market resulting in the findings both being acknowledged and understood by both the board and leadership team. Here are a few below that stood out:
- Onboarding process for had many friction points such as email delivery issues, excessive profile organisation setup and several nuclear configuration decision the customer was expected to make.
- The product modules were segmented, and simple crud functions we’re separated across pages making it difficult to manage data.
- No realisation points we’re marked out in the product, to tell the customer why they succeeded.
- Customers faced challenges with getting their end users to adopt due to privacy concerns thus the application not being used at all, this was due to a lack of information available in the onboarding process.
- The product only functioned if you used it in a particular way, stark difference between implemented user flow and assumed user flow.
- Features in general lacked finishing when benchmarked against similar products.
- Excessive interaction behaviour not suitable for the intended ICP.
Outcomes Achieved:
1. Increase synergy between board and leadership team
Where friction could be felt and both parties defending their stances, increased reporting visibility allowed everyone to be on the same page. This provided visibility of all forms of technology risk to the board directly.
3. Time to value measured and recorded from 1+ year to 14 Days.
The Qx Audit itself was able to drive the implementation of controls to highlight behaviours that represented issues in quality of experience.
4. Increased Product confidence
Over the course of the next 12 months, the quality of HTI’s product improved significantly. The sales team, now equipped with a reliable and robust platform, regained their confidence and enthusiasm. Customer feedback highlighted the improved stability and usability of the software.
5. Positive Qx Report:
The quarterly quality (Qx) report showed a marked reduction in bug reports and customer complaints. Feature adoption rates increased, and customer satisfaction scores improved.
6. Increased Investment:
Pleased with the positive outcomes, John decided to lead the Series A funding round. His continued investment and support were instrumental in HTI’s sustained growth
Conclusion
This case study demonstrates how an investor’s intervention is not always bad and comes from experience which can positively influence a startup’s trajectory. By prioritising quality and fostering a collaborative environment, HTI was able to build a reliable product, boost team morale, and achieve long-term success. The CEO’s transformation from a blinded product evangelist to a product player was key to this turnaround, ultimately leading to increased investor confidence and further investment.
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