Sprout by Intuit

82% of first time small businesses fail globally. One of the reasons for the high failure rate is that these businesses lack the understanding of when to do what. Last year four of us pitched Intuit an idea to solve this problem and received funding to work on that full time. We created a service that uses AI and human experts to guide aspiring entrepreneurs through a personalized set of steps to legally establish the business and start serving their clients.

I was the Co-Founder and Lead Designer on this team responsible for everything Design from putting together the funding pitch to ship a SaaS product that delivered value to customers and brought a durable competitive advantage to Intuit.

Meet our customer, Patti.

Patti is a wife and mother of 2 beautiful children.
She has a full-time job at a marketing agency but now wants to start her own business.

She has 2 hrs. each night to work on her business after putting her children to sleep
Has ~$3000 to start her business.
Wants her business income to eventually replace her job, but understands it will take time
She wants to take her time to ensure that her business is set up correctly.

Customer Problem Statement

I am an aspiring entrepreneur who is starting a service-based small business for the first time

Trying to legally establish my business and start serving clients

But I’m wasting time and money in the process

Because I don’t know what I need to do or if I’m doing any of it right

Which makes me feel extremely frustrated

Ideal State

In an ideal world, Patti can legally establish her business in less than 24 hours with complete confidence.

FY20 Goals

Business start time reduced by 90%
80% Completion Rate
3% WoW Completions
Less than 1% Claim Rate

Success measures

Task Completion Rate
Time on task
Satisfaction
Net Promoter Score

Our Solution

Sprout uses AI and human experts to guide aspiring entrepreneurs through a personalized set of steps to legally establish their business.

The product is Live in 31 cities in the state of Florida, USA.

View Live Product

Prototype

How we got there

The beginning - Deep customer empathy

First few weeks of starting Sprout, the entire team went out and observed about 30 aspiring entrepreneurs who were in the process of starting their business. The team also attended local entrepreneurs meetups, co-working spaces, and local SBA/SBDC entrepreneurship classes to gain empathy. Each of us also paired with an entrepreneur and journeyed with them throughout the process of starting their business, just as their business partner would do. We also observed interactions between entrepreneurs and business coaches.

Key Insights

Entrepreneurs find it painful to identify the things they need to do to start their business.

They find the information that is available online is generic and does not consider the specifics of their business.

They have to go to multiple places to get things done. They miss the big picture.
Entrepreneurs feel lonely in the process of starting their business.

Based on these insights, we assumed that entrepreneurs are looking for personalized action items to start their business. Our next step was to look for ways to prove this assumption.

Tested a broader solution first

Critical assumption

Entrepreneurs are looking for a specific list of steps that they need to take to start their small businesses.

Hypothesis

If we create an action plan with a list of steps an entrepreneur should take to start their business, then 50% of them would find it valuable.

Experiment

Collect information about entrepreneur and their business and manually create an action plan. See if entrepreneurs find it valuable.

How do we measure success?

By the number of entrepreneurs pay for the action plan.

Outcome of experiment

6 of 8 customers paid $25 for the action plan.

Narrowed the offering with a durable competitive advantage for Intuit

Though entrepreneurs loved the action plan we offered, we quickly realized that it was way too broad for our team to deliver (Pricing, Marketing, Setting up payments, and Legal). We needed to narrow our offering.

As the next step, we ran a survey that asks aspiring entrepreneurs what their immediate goals are, hoping that would give us some insights on where to narrow. We also applied the "Customer Driven Innovation" framework to narrow the solution that gives Intuit the most competitive edge.

Tested the market size

We needed to make sure that there is a big enough market for a solution that legally establishes small businesses. We decided to run ads to a landing page that explains our offering and value props to see if there is enough interest.

Hypothesis

If we run ads to a landing page that describes our value props, then 3.75% of the visitors will convert (3.75 is the average google ads conversion rate across industries).

Experiment

Send ad traffic to a landing page that describes our offering and value propositions.

How do we measure success?

Ad conversion rate.
“Get started” button conversion rate.

Outcome of experiment

3.6% Google ads conversion from 30k impressions
33% conversion on the landing page “Get started” button.

Tested if our solution is "valuable"

Critical assumption

Entrepreneurs would find value in a solution that enables them to legally establish their business.

Hypothesis

If we prototype an online service that takes entrepreneurs through the process of legally establishing their small business and show to aspiring entrepreneurs then 50% of them would sign up for that experience.

Experiment

Create a Figma prototype that takes business information and spits out an action plan to legally establish the business, and see if entrepreneurs sign up for that.

How do we measure success?

Sign-up rate

Outcome of experiment

5 of 7 customers signed up for the Figma prototype.

Released the MVP

We iterated the prototype by working closely with 5 early adopters. After multiple iterations of the Figma prototype, we released Sprout MVP to 1 city, 1 county in the state of Florida, USA.

Increased the sign-up conversion rate

When we released the MVP, we observed a considerable drop from the sign-up page. Our sign-up conversion was 1.24% which was below the industry average of 2.35%

Hypothesis

If we provide more context about the Sprout process on our sign-up page, then the sign-up conversion will increase by 50%

Experiment

Provide more context on the sign-up page about the process and the expert team and see if that improves conversion.

How do we measure success?

Increase in sign-up conversion.

Outcome of experiment

Sign-up conversion increased by 23%

Qualitative feedback

“I love there is a real expert team behind the scenes”
“I feel more confident that I can get their help if I get stuck on something”

We learned that messages delivered using this component had a high read rate. That also increased customers’ overall confidence in Sprout that a human expert team is there behind the scenes. We used this pattern at multiple touchpoints throughout the experience to instill confidence.

Increased the task completion rate

We observed that some of the customers are opening the steps but are not taking action on them. We learned through customer interviews that they did not have enough context on the page to take action.

Hypothesis

If we provide additional context on the step, then we see a 50% increase in step completion.

Experiment

Provide additional context and answer all the questions the customer might have about the step and see if that improves step completion.

How do we measure success?

An increase in the step completion rate.

Outcome of the experiment

Step completion rate increased.
Overall confidence in the steps also increased.

Qualitative feedback

“This answers all my questions upfront, like why I should secure my business name, what happens if I don’t and how to get one”
“Love that this explains things in simple language”

Observed a customer behavior

Even after completing all the legal steps, 7 of 8 customers did not start marketing or selling their services. We learned they were stuck on marketing materials like logo/brochure/website.

Hypothesis

If we deliver a marketing starter kit, then 80% of customers will start marketing and selling their services.

Experiment

Create a marketing package with a logo, business cards, website, and free Adwords credits. Ship them in a Box to customers and see if that helps customers get started with marketing and selling.

How do we measure success?

An Increase in the number of customers starts marketing after receiving their marketing package.

Outcome of the experiment

6 of 8 customers started marketing
Sean Ellis survey score went from 80% to 100%

Qualitative feedback

“I was stuck on this forever. These are not perfect but I can start using them today”
“You made a website for me.. Now I have a place to put my product photos”
2 of 8 customers felt they need to tweak their website before sending traffic.

Details of the booklet

In addition to the customers' business cards, we also added a booklet in the box with congratulations note from Sprout team along with links/QR codes to access their logo, domain name, website, business email, a printable flyer, Google AdWords credit, and recommended experts for their next steps.

Optimized the process for scale

Though we learned that the marketing package delightfully solved the customer problem, the effort it took to create them for every customer was beyond our team could support at the moment.

We needed an alternate solution that is scalable to the next order of magnitude of customers.

Hypothesis

If we provide external resources and recommendations on how to start marketing, then 60% of customers who completed all the legal steps will start marketing and selling their services.

Experiment

Add a new section with links to external resources for marketing, finances and taxes

How do we measure success?

An increase in the number of customers starts marketing after completing their legal steps.
Usage of “What’s next” section.

Outcome of the experiment

8 of 8 customers visited the “What’s next” section and opened the articles.

Qualitative feedback

“These are helpful, I would still like to get some expert advice here, especially on accounting and taxes”
Marketing resources are a good starting place”

Some of the other iterations based on customer feedback

Improved the visual design

Some of the earlier concepts that we explored

Sprout’s strategy to leverage partnerships and the Intuit ecosystem

Sprout’s strategy to be a Market Network

Marketplace + Network effect platform

Competitive landscape

Analogs and Inspirations

Beyond Product Design

Being a co-founder, I learned to adapt to the owner's mindset and being responsible for the whole product and business. This also helped sharpen my business acumen and understanding the impact of design decisions on the business objectives. The opportunity I got to expand my role by working on branding, marketing, communications, event design to name a few, and how all of them fit into the ecosystem was another highlight.

The outcome

Product is Live in 31 Cities, 3 Counties in the state of Florida, USA.

Scaled the process reducing human touch-points by automating the workflow using Intuit’s Knowledge Engineering.

2 of 8 Customers established their businesses within the first week.
Sean Ellis Product-Market fit survey 2/2 strongly disappointed if Sprout were to go away.
Net Promoter Score 100

My learnings from this project

Every solution creates new problems/needs. Fall in love with customers so that we know when their problems/needs change or new ones arrive.

It is important to do things that don’t scale. Example - It was a slow process when each of us worked with customers 1:1 to start their business. But that exposed the real problems much quicker and helped us move faster later.

Value > Friction. Users don’t mind friction if you’re giving them a ton of value.

And more importantly, I learned to navigate the ambiguities of building a product and business.

I had the great opportunity to talk about Sprout and my experience navigating the ambiguities of building a product to an audience of Designers, Product leaders, Design educators, and students in a session that was organized by UXPA, Dallas.