Bridging Horizons: 'Carnivore Nights' Intersects with Entrepreneurial Ventures, Innovation, and Product Leadership — Part II

In this is a 4-part story I will take though my journey from creating & opening my own business to closing it, an entire product / business lifecycle, and all from an Entrepreneur & PM Point-of-View (PoV).

Each part will address a different set of milestones in the product's lifecycle, and contain a link to the previous part, for the readers who’ve missed the previous part and want to catch up.

In this second part we will go through the journey from Discovery to MVP, and every phase in between.

Link to Part I

Part II — From Discovery to MVP

As PMs we don’t always get the chance (and pleasure) to be part of the product's ideation team. Sometimes not even part of the Discovery team. Once we are added to the loop, we can sometimes feel as if we were left out from "the fun part", and that we're missing data points that had risen along the way.

In this case, as it was my own business, I was fortunate enough to lead the entire lifecycle from Ideation to EOL.

For the Discovery phase I started with Friends & Family — this was around EOY 2011 / BOY 2012, I invited close friends and family members to participate in such an evening, for free, and give me their feedback;

Next, I asked these friends and family members to invite their close friends for another session - this time not for free anymore, but at cost, while gathering feedback from paying customers

I also traveled to visit cattle breeders in Israel to decide who I’d like to work with - according to the bread and the raising conditions; and visited meat disassembly factories and slaughterhouses to get a sense of how things are done, and become a proficient professional.

Now it was time to set the Vision, Strategy, and MVP — I guess you’re getting where I’m going with this.

The Vision was to have ~40 people fill in every such event, have them ask questions about the various cuts & courses, and let them relax unwind and meet new people just before the weekends — therefore, these events took place only on Thursday evenings.

The ‘To Do’ Strategy — become a pillar in FB meat-related groups & communities, by providing advice from my accumulated knowledge in the field; set up a website for people to find me via Google; set up an FB business page, and word of mouth.

The Hebrew Slogan reads: There’s room / place for meat; Pun is intended ;-)

One additional strategic channel presented itself when I was offered to co-found an FB group that would focus on smoking, BBQ-ing, and grilling meat; I was the SME (subject matter expert) of the founding team, and the community grew bigger by the day thanks to the knowledge shared there — it was no “yet another Instagram” FB group, but one that focused on delivering content and value to its members, and it is now the largest group in Israel on this subject (~70K members).

I am no longer there, as I moved on to my next endeavor.

The ‘Not To Do’ Strategy — the things you should Not do, in order to maintain your business vision & goals; in this case it’s: No Salads, side dishes, drinks, etc.

The Hebrew Slogan reads: We don’t do salads

The MVP was defined as having all of the blueprint’s points in place, plus a couple of meat providers I can trust & work with, so they’d know I’m looking only for high-end supply, and nothing else will cut it; it also included a registration list built on trust, where participants would only pay a fixed – predetermined & known – price during the evening of the event, in cash, no credit card taken or needed.

Once all was in place I launched the business formally (~2012-2013), and set off the meat-smokers & “Meat Nights” trends that have thrived in the Israeli market in the past decade.