Changing the Beat
A coda for Tempo Sciences & Lessons Learned
We’re pivoting.
After more research, conversations, and experimentation, Michael and I have decided to drop Tempo Sciences and work on something new.
If you missed it on my previous blog, the summary is that a friend and I decided to try and build an e-commerce brand, focused on providing supplements for people rolling at raves. But after many conversations with supplement suppliers, time spent gauging customer interest, and running an ad campaign, we’ve decided to focus on a different problem space.
I want to share the updates since my last post and some of the lessons we learned along the way.
Manufacturing Headaches
Michael and I were confident we had our formula down after having looked at some competitors and after extensive research on scientific papers. But as we had more conversations with supplement manufacturers, we began to realize we were going to run into a huge problem.
To create our custom formula, suppliers required a minimum order of 100,000 to 1,000,000 units, which would end up costing us anywhere between $25,000 to $70,000 to produce. We knew we would have to pay, and had been shopping around for a reasonable price. But we balked at the large minimums, based on what we knew about our customers.
From the research we had done, it was clear that our customers would be purchasing our product at most 4-5 times a year. Rolling was something done for festivals or big events, and not something done on a more regular basis (like going out to a bar for drinks). The low frequency of usage made the minimum order quantities hard to justify, especially since supplements do expire.
This was further complicated by the fact that we wanted to do an “all-in-one” pill that would include all of the vitamins and nutrients needed for promoting recovery. Other competitors had kits where each ingredient was in a separate pill, which felt cheap. Yet after talking to suppliers, I started to see why they went in that direction. It is much less expensive to buy pre-made pills separately and package them, rather than have all the ingredients in one custom pill.
But having the ingredients in a single pill was important to us, as we wanted to create a premium-feeling product (as opposed to the other brands which felt cheaper). We decided to pivot: Instead of a supplement only to be taken at festivals, we decided to rebrand it as a daily multivitamin for consumers who take party drugs. We had seen many success stories for multivitamins targeting consumers who drink. Perhaps a multivitamin for party drug users could work?
A Concerning Direction
At this point though, I was starting to feel less excited about this new direction. When we first came up with the idea, we had a clear customer persona in mind: our “work hard, play hard” friends who dabbled in the occasional substance while being conscious of their health. As we pivoted to a multivitamin for party drug users, I started to think, who is this even for?
It’s pretty much an open secret that many tech professionals and Ivy-league educated workers dabble in the occasional psychoactive substance. But among my friends, never to the point where a multivitamin for protecting against harm would have ever felt like a necessity. In reading scientific papers to determine our formula, I also got a deeper understanding of the the harm caused by certain drugs. Yes, perhaps our formula could mitigate some negative effects, but I got the feeling that abstinence was really the best medicine.
As we continued to evaluate options, we spoke with one of the founders of a yogurt soju cocktail brand. I was intrigued since my product manager brain couldn’t figure out a clear problem they were solving. We learned that they had been working on their idea for 4 years, having pivoted from a previous Asian-inspired drink and finding success with their new version. What was clear to me was that the team was passionate about their customers. They knew their market well and were excited about what they were building.
The founder mentioned that he had previously actually been a product manager and that a lot of the lessons he had learned at work weren’t valuable in this new venture. Yet customer empathy, a crucial product lesson, was clearly on display.
I couldn’t say I felt the same way about our prospective customers. We were straying away from the professionals who party that we knew personally to people who engage in more unhealthy behaviors. Having more knowledge about the harm caused by party drugs made me less excited about building a product for that audience.
But at this point, we were working off of our assumptions and past conversations, we didn’t have any data to back up our thinking. Maybe there was a market of professionals who dabbled in substances and wanted to guarantee their brain’s peak performance. We finally decided to run an experiment.
The Experiment
When many people talk about experimenting with a product idea, they mention having just two pieces: a landing page and an ad.
Intellectually, it made sense. Obviously you don’t want to overinvest before you know there’s heat around idea. But how do you actually do this?
The reality was actually much easier than I imagined.
I had never created an ad before, but making one was trivial. One of the most popular tools out there is CapCut (by ByteDance, owners of TikTok). Using free stock footage from Pexels, splicing together a workable 15-second ad was actually pretty easy.
After creating the ad, the next step was actually running it. For that, I turned to Meta’s Ads Manager. After creating a Facebook and Instagram page for Tempo, I could create an ad campaign, specifying who would see it and on what platforms. I targeted 22-50 year-olds in major cities, running the ad exclusively on Instagram.
I set up the ad campaign with a budget of $100. I had no idea what to expect, as this was my first time personally running an ad. Would anyone actually click on it?
I was shocked when after a week, people did in fact click into the ad, and were exploring our website. We got a solid clickthrough rate which showed that people were actually interested in learning more.
Yet that interest stopped when it came time to sign up for updates. We added a signup form in order to see which visitors would actually be committed. Unfortunately, these visits didn’t transform into the number of signups we had hoped. We decided to end the experiment after a month, confident that we had collected enough data.
Lessons
In the end, we decided that shutting Tempo down would be the right decision. We were less excited about the idea, and didn’t see the numbers from the ad campaign that would convince us to spend $10-$20K on actually manufacturing our product. But we ended up learning some valuable lessons.
For one, physical products are hard. Relying on third parties limited our options and also required a lot of upfront investment. I’m not scratching out future work with physical products, but would like to focus on something purely digital for my next venture.
One product lesson that is consistent, whether in corporate product management or entrepreneurship, is really understanding your customer. But at the same time, I think being excited about the customer you’re serving is important. It was hard to stay motivated as I felt more distance between myself and our potential future customers. I would like to feel excited about putting myself in my customer’s shoes. In a similar vein, I’d like to build a product that’s actually good for them.
Finally, running an experiment was absolutely the first thing we should have done. When we got started, we did some things well (talking to prospective customers and getting a sense for how supplement manufacturers work) and some things not so well (spending money we didn’t need to and not continuing those customer conversations). But now, we actually knew how to quickly set up a landing page and run an ad. With a customer in mind and an idea or problem to solve, doing this again feels much simpler.
Tempo is shutting down, but Michael and I are still scheming up new ideas. Things may move a little slower, as I have become more focused on career decisions (more on that later).
In the end though, I’m happy to have invested time and effort into working on Tempo, and look forward to taking these lessons to my next venture.