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Startup Day 563 -- Recap and Respite

First some updates on recent posts:

  1. Winter break offered a welcome pause in work activity. The kids and I made lists of activities we planned to mentally put aside during the break. I wrote down agonizing over product-market fit; they wrote down fighting with their sibling. Their favorite part was burning up their lists afterwards to symbolically set aside what we wrote down. 😁
  2. Empowered Together's enterprise pilot with LOGAN concluded and we left the door open for future conversation. The pilot showed both LOGAN and Empowered Together that engaging parents in community is difficult, that immediate kids' needs drive parents' behavior, and that parents are willing to ask for help to meet those needs. 
  3. With those lessons in mind, I piloted a December Accelerator with parents to test whether an accelerator model helps users move forward on their parenting journeys. I was also curious if participating as a cohort would impact their momentum. The emotional support offered between parents during that 3-week sprint blew me away. I've learned a lot about what pain points are addressable, though the low uptake of the accelerator's Assess-Plan-Implement model leaves me still wrestling with product-market fit.
Respite showed up as a need during the December Accelerator and during customer discovery conversations in Oct/Nov. If you haven't heard of it applied in this context, respite refers to professional caregiving for an individual with a disability; when respite is in place, parents have non-caregiving time to devote to other areas of their lives. Respite providers come with specialized skills to meet the needs of the individual with a disability. Unsurprisingly, respite is a hard nut to crack so it's no wonder it remains a pain point. January is a relatively quiet month -- a good time to hunker down, revisiting user data around respite and other trends I want to test further. My focus remains identifying what parents would hire Empowered Together to do then testing the traction of that product/service with a broader audience before piloting it.

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