
James's profile
Activity for James Balzer

James Balzer
Sydney, Australia
Joined this community on Dec 7, 2017
University or Company
MQ
Degree or Work area
Arts
Country you Trekked/are Trekking in
Timor-Lesté
[Customer segments] ERS Collection
Hello there :)
Thank you for the post. It's good to see ERS hard at work and making progress.
There are just some points of clarification that I would like to hear answers for in regards to some of the suggestions and statements in the above post. These are as follows.
1) Perhaps I can be corrected, but I'm struggling to see how this Black Label post demonstrates a properly validated Customer Segment. It's one thing to be able to understand 'Market Potential', but that doesn't mean that all of the above types of customers can be classified as part of your Customer Segment. I feel that validating a Customer Segment is about truly understanding whether or not your assumed customers genuinely have a problem for which they're willing to pay for your specific service in order to solve.
Perhaps I have knowledge gaps, that I'm willing to be corrected on, but it appears to be that you are assuming that they are part of your Customer Segment based off unsubstantiated hypotheses and assumptions. These are hypotheses and assumptions regarding the potential problem that you think customers might be experiencing, and the assumption that they're willing to pay for your specific solution in order to solve this hypothesised pain point of theirs. It's the reason that the 'Problem' and 'Customer Segment' boxes in the Lean Canvas are both labelled as '1', as the validation of these boxes need to be done in direct conjunction with each other in order to be adequate validations.
2) In the post, you stated that your desire to establish distinctions between the various hotel sizes is "based on the assumption that different sized hotels would have varying priorities and perceptions of waste management in Timor-Leste." Feel free to provide clarification on what I'm about to say, but personally at least, I struggle to correlate how hotel size is an influencing factor in differentiating between how hotels perceive waste management differently. Perhaps there is more context that I need or knowledge gaps that I have, so feel free to talk about any further reasoning that you may have had that I'm not aware of.
3) This feeds into my last point, but I am finding it difficult to perceive how the pricing of the rooms can act as a primary indication of hotel size. As an analogy, I could go to The Quay restaurant and pay $80 for 1 scoop of some fancy French/Italian ice cream, or I could go to Hog's Breath Cafe and pay $20 for 'all you can eat' and consume 20 plates of chicken nuggets, 10 double choc sundaes and 5 cheese stuffed supreme pizzas in 1 night. While what The Quay offers is notably more expensive for what one gets, Hog's Breath Cafe is a larger business overall, which is a result of a plethora of other factors outside of price points.
Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt that you have considered all of this reasoning, and the analogy is primarily there for the purpose of humour. I would be interested to see what clarification you could have on what I've said here, as perhaps there is 'on-the-ground' knowledge that would fill potential knowledge gaps that I have.
4) Regarding the 'Schools' segment, I would perhaps consider properly testing the amount of paper and cardboard that they produce, and their willingness to pay for a collection service for it. However, in my opinion, that's a really cool customer segment that is definitely worth looking into.
Awesome stuff Rose, Matt and team! Venture On and Lead Always!!