Pulkit is the founder of Beer30, a tool for helping brewers manage their data better and become more efficient (and profitable).
To read the full interview with Pulkit, check out Kicking SaaS: 101 Founders on What it Takes to Launch a Software as a Service.
How did you get into the brewery business?
I studied mechanical engineering at Harvard University, and was then recruited to come to San Diego and work as a Process Engineer at Ballast Point Brewing. I focused on packaging equipment, kegging, bottling, and canning. Then I helped launch nitrogen brewed brands for Ballast Point and bulk production.
In October 2017, I started The 5th Ingredient. The first four ingredients in beer are water, grains, hops, and yeast. The fifth is data.
As I hit up potential clients, I realized that most brewers still use paper logs, spreadsheets, and whiteboards for data, which makes it pretty difficult to run analysis. That's when I came up with the concept for Beer30.
After getting feedback from a few early adopters, I launched our Alpha version in early 2018, with the first paying customer in May 2018. The team and the product have been scaling and growing organically ever since.
How did you get feedback and test viability?
In the beginning of 2018, I told myself I had five months to test market fit for Beer30. So I approached a couple brewery owners and brewery friends in San Diego and asked them to check out the product. I continued to meet up with them, collecting feedback and building out the product. In April 2018, I went to the national Craft Brewers Conference, where I showed Beer30 to 110 brewery employees across 70 breweries. I asked them simple questions, like, “Do you like it? Would you use it?”
The response was overwhelmingly like, “Yeah, this is really cool. It's nowhere near what I need, but at least I like where you're headed.” I got my first customer and realized that this was something people would pay for.
Get feedback on what your intended customers like and dislike about your product, and keep on updating the software until you can prove that somebody is going to pay for it. Someone may tell you they love your platform, but when you ask them if they’re willing to pay for it, it changes the entire conversation.
You should also have a couple industry-specific contacts who are interested in the product enough to give you true feedback on it. If you don't have those contacts, that indicates there’s no clear product/market fit or you haven’t found your target ideal customer.
How did you land on a timeline for testing viability?
The important thing is to put a legitimate timeline on when you think you're going to have an MVP up and running, even if it seems arbitrary. Use external events like conferences to hold yourself accountable to your timelines and product launch. I told myself five months because my lease was expiring, but people will spend one to three years just building something out. I wanted to make sure there was traction before I wasted that much time.
Give yourself a true deadline and hold to it. Be honest. Are you hitting your goals and setting proper metrics?
To read the full interview with Pulkit, check out Kicking SaaS: 101 Founders on What it Takes to Launch a Software as a Service.