Case Study: Aviron's Product-Market Fit Journey Started With Doing The Things That Don't Scale

Sometimes to find product-market fit, you have to drive ten hours to visit your customer using your product in person.

Aug 16, 2021

Introduction:

Andy Hoang is the founder and CEO of Aviron Interactive. His background is in business and operations, but it was really his gym routine that sparked the idea behind Aviron. Even though the idea itself was a classic light bulb moment that many entrepreneurs reference, Hoang’s family history feels like it predetermined his path as a founder.

Aviron’s interactive rowing machine will transport you to scenic destinations, a place of ﬁerce competition, or self-improvement through hundreds of exciting and engaging workouts.

Problem: Customers who want studio fitness classes are switching to connected home fitness equipment, while customers who want high-intensity and competitive workouts at home continue searching for an alternative.
Market: Connected fitness equipment industry TAM is $93B and growing at 31.2% CAGR. Nine in 10 Americans plan to continue at-home workouts even once gyms fully reopen.
Solution: Aviron’s interactive rower is equipped with a 22” HD touchscreen and loaded with hundreds of competitive and high-intensity games, races, and High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) programs, letting you train with others from the comfort of your home, on your schedule.
Team: The team consists of Andy Hoang, Founder & CEO – former COO at Canada’s 13th fastest growing company; Bao Ho, CTO – Former lead engineer at Gameloft (5000 employees); and Inessa Karlinsky, CMO - 8+ years ad agency /marketing.

Executive Summary:

Problem: Understanding When You Need To Iterate On Who Your Ideal Customer Persona Is

Andy initially focused on young, athletic males such as himself, but he and his Aviron team found traction when they expanded their ideal user to include women as well.
Market: Using Yourself As A Starting Point To Understand Your Customers

Andy relied on starting with himself as an ideal customer but made sure to expand his vision to consider others. As he put it, “Using yourself as a guide is fine, but you have to keep peeling back the layers of the problem to uncover the emotions that relate to the problem and the motivations that help yourself and others towards the solution.”
Solution: Observing His Customers Using His Product In Person

Andy only was able to truly understand what customers loved or hated about the Aviron rower once he saw them use it. This process was something that did not scale, but it was essential in Aviron finding PMF.
Team: Learning How To Manage Disagreement With Others

Andy says it best here: “Learning how to manage disagreement with your co-founder or your team is important. As a solo founder, I had to decide in which cases I was going to be open to a back and forth and when I was unwilling to compromise and ensure the other party understood this.”
Takeaway: Unscalable Processes Help Guide You To PMF

Scale is a consequence of product-market fit. To avoid growing in the wrong direction, one has to focus on learning what a customer wants from unscalable, time-consuming, but ultimately necessary customer investigation.

Case Study: Aviron

Problem: Understanding When You Need To Iterate On Who Your Ideal Customer Persona Is

Tell me about a problem or set of problems that you’ve had to solve on your journey to product-market fit.

Once you have some product-market fit (PMF), making improvements via product iterations to improve PMF isn’t as challenging because you have customers you can learn from. But that first step when creating the product is challenging; research, asking friends, etc., only gets you so far. You never really know if people will want what you are building. In the beginning, it’s a lot about relying on your team’s experience, intuition, and luck.

We initially hypothesized and planned for a product that would appeal to a competitive, athletic male persona. We achieved product-market fit with a broader demographic that includes families and, of course, women. The key has been a hyper-focus on the product - a well-built fitness product and continuous improvement to the software - lends itself to natural market adoption, community building, and word-of-mouth sales.

That being said, although we feel confident we have achieved PMF, we are still at the early stages, and chances are we will need to continue to iterate and adjust. For example, we may experience a plateau in adoption and need to relook at factors relating to product and market. In my mind, the process of PMF is ongoing.

Why were these problems so critical to solve? What was it like personally struggling to overcome these challenges to achieving PMF?

To be honest, I wouldn’t look at our journey to PMF as full of problems that were critical to solve - it was a journey and continues to be a journey. As the world and the market evolves, the products need to continue to evolve as well. You were happy with an iPhone 4 in 2010, but you wouldn’t be today.

That being said, product development and iterations on the way to PMF are challenging with a hardware-software company. Any minor change to the physical product results in thousands in new mold costs and product delays. I’m not sure if I will still feel this way in 6 or 12 months, but this is why I had to rely largely on instinct and my own personal experience.

We were bootstrapped for the whole of product development and a majority of our PMF journey without investor money to spend or the infrastructure of a large organization with a budget set aside for research and experimentation.

You have to stay very single-minded, linear, and focused on the product vision. This is easier said than done. I sought counsel and advice from experienced business leaders, industry veterans, and potential customers, who all provided conflicting advice on the ‘the best way forward.’ It was very difficult to maintain a linear vision throughout. Especially as I watched my personal debt grow and savings dwindle. But this is what I signed up for, and I would do it all again.

I have a business background, so over time, I’ve taken in a lot of knowledge, like the ability to trust my intuition and using common sense to figure out how to move forward. I think that’s what a lot of businesses do in the beginning, especially young companies. You’re not thinking of the ‘framework’ because, unlike a big company with lots of processes and bureaucracy, you’re doing what you feel is right and trying to move quickly while making decisions, i.e. aiming and shooting at the same time. I think this goes for a lot of high-growth startup tech companies. And the unique thing about being in this space is things are changing all the time, and you’re constantly making decisions that will affect the success of your company.

The key has been a hyper-focus on the product - a well-built fitness product and continuous improvement to the software - lends itself to natural market adoption, community building, and word-of-mouth sales.

Market: Using Yourself As A Starting Point To Understand Your Customers

Let’s get deeper into the pain point or points you were trying to solve. Imagine I’m a customer thinking about using your product or service. How do you go about understanding my pain and creating a solution to address it?

I relied heavily on my own experience with working out and the pain points I experienced to develop the product. I have been physically active my whole life, starting with competitive martial arts and more strength training and weight lifting as I got older. Working towards the solution to “END BORING WORKOUTS” remains one of my main motivations and a personal mantra I use to this day when working through product and software development.

Using yourself as a guide is fine, but you have to keep peeling back the layers of the problem to uncover the emotions that relate to the problem and the motivations that help yourself and others towards the solution. This helped me ask others who experienced similar pain points the right questions. Starting with my personal experience was key for me.

Assuming you’ve managed to address the pain points I face as a customer, what additional information did you discover in your journey to PMF that there’s a large market in need of a solution to the existing problem?

The journey allowed us to understand we were providing a solution to a problem experienced by ‘family units, ’ not just individuals. The makeup of ‘families’ or households, to be more accurate, is evolving and facing fitness and wellbeing challenges. It’s not just mom trying to lose a couple of pounds or dad looking for a low-impact way to get his cardio in because jogging is getting too hard on his knees. For example, people’s fitness acumen is increasing, and they are gaining the awareness that they have a much higher chance of making sustainable long-term changes if their partner is making the same commitment, so partners are looking for fitness solutions that suit them both. Households are also growing with adult children sticking around longer, and parents are increasingly concerned their teenage children are not active enough. Aviron, a piece of fitness equipment that provides a wide breadth of entertainment and functionality to appeal to a wide range of age groups and fitness levels, is becoming a solution for thousands of households across the country.

How did you narrow your scope of what portion of the market you wanted to tackle first? Who did you decide would be your first beachhead customers and why?

We made an assumption that, like us, not everyone enjoyed the class-based experience, and as connected fitness continues to grow, customers were going to look for alternatives that better suited their personal preferences.

I made a decision to focus on engaging self-serve content that would allow users an autonomous experience. For example, you are not “booked” for an hour class - instead, you have hundreds of content options across six diverse categories of varying lengths and difficulties (some as short as 2 minutes) to build up a workout that works for you that day.

I categorized myself as my customer, knowing what I like in a product and my pain points. I also used my social circle, which is diverse but with shared interests, to bounce ideas off.

If you want to start a business, there are two (good) reasons in my opinion. 1. You feel personally impacted to make a difference. 2. You have a strong passion or love for the product. My own experience was a barometer for product development.

Using yourself as a guide is fine, but you have to keep peeling back the layers of the problem to uncover the emotions that relate to the problem and the motivations that help yourself and others towards the solution.

Solution: Observing His Customers Using His Product In Person

How did you build your solution to maximize its relevance with the customer and ensure product-market fit? If you haven't found PMF yet, what have you learned? What are the blockers for getting to PMF?

In the early days, while the company’s focus was still B2B, I demoed the Aviron rower to gyms and resellers across the country. It was a tough market, to say the least. People are representing the interests of their company, and they need to be sure something will sell before they commit. And when something is new, there is no guarantee it will sell. Understanding the concerns of this market helped me tighten up the hardware and software offering so that it would appeal to businesses and, in turn, direct consumers as well.

There was a lot of indifference and uninterested parties, but I’ll be forever grateful to the individuals who took the time to understand the product and provide constructive feedback that helped to iterate the product and move Aviron closer to PMF.

What are some of the things you did that “didn’t scale” to shape your solution today?

To understand what customers loved or hated about the Aviron rower, I needed to see them use it; watch them navigate the touchscreen, see which programs or game they chose, what motivated them to finish the workout or stop halfway through and choose something else. Needless to say, our product analytics were not ready at the time. To gain this type of deep knowledge, I often had to drive upwards of 10 hours to where the demo rower was installed and speak to people one on one. The depth of knowledge I was able to gain was great; this mode of obtaining that knowledge was not scalable.

What did you learn to best engage with your customers? How did you build a tight feedback loop with your customers to rapidly improve your solution to their problems?

One of the strongest moats and the most successful feedback loop we have in place happened completely by accident. An advisor told us to start a private Facebook community for our customers. There’s a big difference between thinking you understand the value of something and then seeing the value once you’ve done it. I’m in there every day, chatting with long-time customers, introducing myself to newer members, building relationships with a handful of brand evangelists. I have a direct day-to-day view into the lives of customers, and they, in turn, have a direct line of communication with the Aviron team. The importance of a community is one of my biggest takeaways of the last year.

Walk me through how you landed your first few customers as you were building your product or service.

We started B2B first, selling to value-added resellers who would then sell to commercial customers such as gyms, hotels, and corporate wellness. We took the gritty old-school approach of cold calling and emailing business owners. After successfully securing a meeting, we would present to them and hope that they would allow us to demonstrate the rower in person or leave the rower with them for a few weeks for testing. After hundreds of no’s, a few said yes.

To understand what customers loved or hated about the Aviron rower, I needed to see them use it…The depth of knowledge I was able to gain was great; this mode of obtaining that knowledge was not scalable.

Team: Learning How To Manage Disagreement With Others

If you have a cofounder, walk me through a time that you two had a conflict. What was it about? How did you handle the situation? What was the resolution, and how did it impact your working relationship with your cofounder?

I remember having an argument with one of our executives about pricing. We didn’t have data to guide our decision at that point. I wanted to reduce pricing, while my executive wanted to increase pricing. We couldn’t come to a solution that suited us both, and as the founder, I made the final call. We moved on from this, but it left a bad taste, and our relationship began to deteriorate, and we eventually parted ways. Conflict is inevitable. Learning how to manage disagreement with your co-founder or your team is important. As a solo founder, I had to decide in which cases I was going to be open to a back and forth and when I was unwilling to compromise and ensure the other party understood this.

I didn’t handle that situation well, but I was able to learn from it. Relationship building, leadership, and general people skills are critical and much more important than I had initially assumed. Something that helped me put all this into perspective was something Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra said at a Y Combinator talk during my batch. He shared that 50% of his time is spent hiring and building the team. I’m not at 50%, but I am seeing how it’s taking more and more of my time and why it’s so key.

What key qualities did you look for in key early hires to increase your chances of discovering product-market fit, and how did you prioritize what types of hires you needed to make first?

Each hire at the early stage while the total team is <10 or <20 is very key. I initially focused more on the right type of experience and worried about presenting the role as too demanding, fearing that it would turn candidates off. I’ve since learned that a key part of hiring and team development is developing clear core values, and using those to make hiring decisions ensures consistency in decision making, making decisions around hiring, promoting, and even firing easier to make. I won’t say specifically what qualities we look for because what we look for is going to be different than what you look for. As long as the candidate aligns with your values, that’s the most important thing. When everyone is aligned, everything is easier.

With regards to how we prioritize what types of hires we need first, it typically is where we need the most help or where we are excelling. For example, if our data shows we lack in customer support, we’ll hire there. Or if we implement a new revenue channel such as affiliate marketing, and it’s starting to work well, we’ll hire for that role.

I try to motivate my team, but it’s not my strength. I lean more heavily on finding the right people. I used to rely heavily on instinct in the interview process, but we’ve transitioned to a search strategy that focuses on values. If the values, work ethic, and personalities align, I am confident the relationship will be positive. One of the key things I look for is a “winning mentality” - Aviron has aggressive targets; we’re not looking to just grow. We want to outperform and exceed expectations. In less than three months, the company has doubled in size, so it’s essential to find people that want to be a part of this journey. Trust is another critical factor; our employees work remotely, so there is no constant supervision. Employees must be motivated to get their work done and have the drive and ambition to go above and beyond; It’s not for everyone.

If there was a potential employee of your startup reading this Case Study right now, how would you convince them that joining your team is the next best step in their career?

Working at a fast-growing startup can be challenging. I think the saying is, you are running and shooting at the same time. But the biggest advantage is the opportunity to learn so much in a short period of time, to make an impact, and the potential to be a part of something huge.

It is essential to surround yourself with high-caliber people. As cliche as it sounds, “if you are the smartest person in the room, find another room” is very accurate. I feel this has accelerated my personal and professional growth probably more than I realize.

One of the key things I look for is a “winning mentality” - Aviron has aggressive targets; we’re not looking to just grow. We want to outperform and exceed expectations.

Takeaway: Unscalable Processes Help Guide You To PMF

What are the key lessons have you learned so far from your journey to achieve product-market fit?

When you don’t have data to help make a decision, do things that are not scalable.
PMF is a constantly evolving process. You never stop trying to achieve PMF.

What’s the hardest problem you’re facing now after solving the prior one(s)?

We feel we’ve achieved some PMF, enough to begin the next phase of our growth. The challenge we are facing now is getting enough inventory to meet demand. It is a tough balancing act; buy too little, and you miss out on potential growth, order too much, and your capital is now tied up in stock instead of growing the business. When you consider that lead times can be as long as six months due to increasingly high demand worldwide, as well as logistical challenges are arising due to the Covid pandemic.

Click Here For Aviron's Founder File!

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