Turning complex products

into stories
BARCELONA 2015

Product

UX/UI

Marketing

Tech

Lazzus

www.lazzus.com
Industry

Mobile app for blind people

Founders and team

Lazzus is one of the creations of

Neosentec, an Asturias-based startup
focused on building augmented reality
(AR) apps for users and companies.
Pedro Javier Sez, Carlos Gonzlez
and Pablo Soto are its founders, all
engineers with a technical background.

The app allows blind people to identify

business and points of interest in their
surroundings through sounds played
via headphones and similar hardware.

Prior to Google Launchpad, Lazzus was already in the middle of a beta testing program
of its app for blind people, letting 30 users try
an early version of the application to receive
feedback and improve the product.
However, they soon realized that given their
target market they needed to better explain
the product, the problem they solved and the
added value it provided.
Most users dont care about the technical details of your
product. Focus on explaining its main assets via storytelling*

Based on the feedback they received during

the program, Lazzus substantially changed
its marketing and go-to-market strategy, as
well as other product related aspects in association to pricing and tracking of metrics.

What were they focusing on prior to Google Launchpad?

*Storytelling

When it comes to persuasion, companies have traditionally appealed to the

left side of the brain logic, pricing,
specs. Emotion, however, has proven
to be the better marketing tool
The Seven Deadly Sins of Startup Storytelling - Andy Smith

As aforementioned, prior to Google Launchpad Lazzus was

already beta testing its app with a group of 30 users. This
provided them with key information on how blind people
could take advantage of the app and the strongest and
weakest parts of the product.
None of these users were paying for the app, and thus Lazzus did not have a clear pricing strategy. As the founding
team admitted, they needed help in three key areas:
Marketing: how to communicate the product to potential
users

*Go-to-market strategy

An overall strategic and tactical framework for your GTM

Michael J. Skok - Harvard innovation
lab

UX: make Lazzus easier to understand and use

Product: pricing
By the time the team got to the program, theyd already set
a launch date for Lazzus: May 30th. This date remained
unchanged by the time the program finished. However, due
to potential agreements with ONCE and Vodafones foundation, the launch date was pushed back a few weeks.

What feedback did they receive from mentors?

Feedback from mentors mostly focused on the three areas

described above.
Marketing and UX:
Lazzus main issue coming into the program was in how
they explained the product to potential users. They used
the following description:

Lazzus uses a field of virtual vision that we use to transmit auditive information related to geolocated points of interest

Based on feedback from mentors, who considered this explanation very technical and not
user friendly, the company changed it to:

Lazzus helps blind people perceive static

points of interest in their surroundings
This explanation, as we will describe in the next
two points of this report, continued to evolve
and improve throughout the program. The company was also adviced to use storytelling techniques to explain its offerings.
Daniela Rubio, a visual impaired woman with
vast experience in the field of UX, also helped
Lazzus improve relevant areas of the product.
Especially in how certain features worked and
how they were not accessible enough for people with visual disabilities.
Product:
Product mentors Javier de la Ossa and Diego
Martn put a lot of emphasis on Lazzus pricing
strategy and tracking of metrics. Before the
event, the team had not established a series of
KPIs or metrics to track on a weekly or monthly
basis. These very same mentors also recommended the team to change its pricing strategy,
moving from a monthly subscription plan to an
annual one.
We knew metrics were important, but we were
not tracking them on a regular basis, says CEO
Pedro Javier Sez. Now we are doing it to know
which product areas need more work and how
to improve them. This would also help the
startup know which features users use the
most, thus affecting its marketing and communications strategy.
What did they discover during Google Launchpad?
Throughout the program the team discovered
that they had not been tracking customers
opinions about the product and the way they

used it. They also found out that the way they
explained the product was too focused on investors or people with a technical background,
instead of the end users of the app.
What is their new focus or action plan following
Google Launchpad?
At the end of the event, these are the measures
Lazzus would take to improve their app.

Use storytelling: build a story that touches

people and that clearly shows the advantages
of using Lazzus
Explain the product by showing how it can be
used: the team ended up developing a new explanation of Lazzus, asking users to cover
their eyes and imagining the sounds the app
would provide with relevant information
about businesses and points of interest in
their surroundings
Change its go-to-market strategy*: Lazzus exclusively focused on the end user, not paying
enough attention to decision makers (family
members, tio technologists) or inuencers
(associations of visually impaired people) who
might have more purchasing power.
If you are interested in following the progress of
Lazzus and which path or paths they end up
exploring, you can check their progress on their
website and Twitter profile.

How can I use this in my startup?

As important as product development is for early stage companies, so is the way those products and services are presented to its potential
customers, who in many occasions are not
tech-savvy. Storytelling and similar techniques
-as described in the referenced articles- are an
effective way to present not only a startup, but
also what they do and offer.