If you learn one thing from Jason, I'd suggest the "customer development interview as sales.". It blows my mind, but he's getting that adoption graph largely by taking his iPad around Tokyo, demoing prospects, and signing them up on the spot. Never would have considered this myself.
In the beginning, we definitely seeded our growth with my iPad. I still do it these days because it's fun and because the app works great on an iPad, but fortunately we've got several other customer acquisition channels right now that don't involve just me and an iPad :)
As AVTizzle says below as well, it's a fantastic way to learn more about your customers and the problems they're facing.
I'd love to see a breakdown of what "kinds" of customers are using makeleaps, even how that's changed over time. Also, how are you dealing with the "inkan" situation? Maybe it's less of a problem than I think to use a digital representation?
Currently we're targeting freelancers and small businesses up to 10 people, so this is the majority of our current user base.
With the inkan situation, we allow our customers to upload both their logo and their inkan. When printed, it looks exactly the same as a 'stamped' inkan. None of our customers have had any problems getting their MakeLeaps invoices processed, which is the important thing. For your interest, we have some printed samples here:
It is the routine and widely accepted practice of many Japanese corporations to use electronic reproductions of their company seal for routine business correspondence such as invoices. Be forewarned, if you ask me for a source, I'm going to cite 常識。
I see. I was specifically told by UFJ staff that a printout of a seal will not work for some of my bank papers. Hence was curious.
Aside, if you are coming to Osaka sometime and have a free evening, do let me know. Would love to hang out. Besides, I have to thank you in person for some excellent advice that worked out very well.
The key part of Patrick's comment is "routine business correspondence." Banking (or anything involving city/prefecture laws) are definitely not routine business, and would require the use of an actual seal (銀行印） that is registered with the city office.
When I was applying for my house loan, the exactitude of the forms I had to fill out was staggering, and each needed to be hand-written, in a specific format, with my personal seal that is registered with the city office. Any mistakes means I had to rewrite the form.
My invoices to clients, on the other hand, are generally printed and sent with the seal on them already. However, all of my clients do require printed invoices to be mailed to them.
This is an important question. We've been working with a Japanese lawyer to help us make we're covered on these legal issues.
The advice we've received is that the important point is whether or not the sending party intended to give legal effects to the document. If so, it is a legally valid document.
This reflects our actual experience at my original company Webnet IT, where our vendors (huge Japanese 3000+ employee companies) send us documents with digital hanko images.
It's a great point, and was actually a pretty intuitive connection in my experience. I started in Sales at Yelp, and when I launched my startup, I recognized that the interviewing and customer development process I was putting potential users through was pretty much exactly the same as the early stages of the Yelp sales pipeline.
The 50 customer development interviews turned into warm leads already halfway down our sales pipeline by the time we were ready to ship.
