Meetup – Thursday 14th August 2014
Reading Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup is easy, digesting Steve Blanks Four Step to the Epiphany takes a little more effort. Actually doing anything with all that insight is much harder. The human condition is wrapped in layers of emotionally skewed judgement, tribal behaviour, past experience and plain wrong headedness that tricks the mind. Running experiments and acting on data doesn’t always come naturally. At last years LeanConf in Manchester Alex Depledge presented a gripping story of Hassle.com’s near demise and subsequent triumphant fight back after finally looking at their data objectively and executing a life saving pivot. Penny Roberts is here to bring the Hassle story up to date and talk about their current growth hacking exploits. Tom Forth will fill our demo slot with Imactivate’s left field mobile technology that may reinvent the physical objects we already own.
Hassle.com by Penny Roberts
Using technology to scale quickly – how we grew from managing 100s of hours of customer bookings to 1000s of hours without the hassle!
Bio:
After 4 years as a Management Consultant for Accenture working for UK Utilities and Telcos I decided to jump ship and join Hassle.com after being approached by Alex Depledge, CEO and Founder – who was also my previous Manager at Accenture. At Hassle.com we are on a mission to transform how people book home services – starting first with cleaning. As the UK Country Manager my job is to help strengthen and grow our service footprint across the UK. twitter: @PenRoberts
Tom Forth from Imactivate: Digital Play With Physical Objects
A short presentation will show how our technology is being applied in museums, and in publishing. But we think that the best way to appreciate our work is to see it in action.
An apk will be provided to those with an Android device and a selection of iOS, and Windows Phone devices will be available at the event.
Bio:
Tom is the founder and lead developer at imactivate; a two-person team of ex-scientists in Leeds. Our technology brings the digital world to real objects in a uniquely flexible and playful way. twitter: @thomasforth
