EBS STARTUP BLOG: PART 10 – “Parking became renting and five became four”

 

Markus: “Hey! I’m glad you’re here to read! I actually have all sorts of things to do, but I still write. I like it when you enjoy it. The readers give our blog a soul and reasons to keep it alive. So thank you for accompanying us on our journey. You almost deserve a share in Parkngo!

Actually, we are no longer Parkngo. If anyone remembers, I started changing the name again. This topic is starting to make me cry. Through an endless creative process and discussion, we came up with such a stupendous simple name that it hurts to think about all the work that was done for it. Our name is now RENT & GO -applause-. Rent & Go better conveys our primary idea of ​​a shared economy, not specifically parking. This will make it easier for us to expand our fields of operations in the future. Hey, you can stop applause now! Yes, thank you. This next topic requires silence. There are four of us now. Christopher is gone. Let’s take a minute to remember him. He is a nice guy and will always be a good friend of ours. There was no conflict, everything went very naturally. The overall work of the team has not been disturbed much by the change. All we had to do was share the marketing topics and the daily routine could continue.

In short, I am currently more actively working with the design – logo and visuals, managing team work, creating the landing page texts and also with marketing. But don’t worry! Loreta will now tell you so thoroughly about her work that you will feel as if you did the work yourself. She is AT LEAST as thorough in the meetings and in team work in general. Crazy girl, I say!”

 

MARKET RESEARCH FOR PARKING PLACE OWNERS

Loreta: “In the previous part, I wrote about conducting a survey aimed at people who park often. Now we also had to conduct a market research about the owners of the parking spaces – key players, who determine whether our idea could work at all. If there are no people to rent out their spaces, then we have nothing to do either. With this survey, we had to find out all the aspects that are important to the owners of parking spaces, what hinders them, what motivates them and everything else.

First of all, I asked the control question whether the person owns a parking space at all. It determines whether the respondent moves forward with the survey at all or not. If a person has a parking space, they are the best source of information and, in principle, a potential customer. We had to find out where people mainly have parking spaces. So I threw all the districts of Tallinn into the ship. However, I realized that with this question we are not finding out the distribution of parking spaces in the sweetest area (read: Downtown). The next question made things more precise. I listed all the downtown areas. With this, we wanted to know which are the areas with more frequent and sparser parking spaces.

If you know the locations of the parking spaces, it would be appropriate to ask if people would be willing to rent out their parking spaces. In fact, it is the most important question! If the main answer is no, then we know that this business model cannot work. Harsh reality. I added a clarifying question to people who answered ‘I do not want to rent out my parking space’ as to why they would not want to do so. It would be great to know why people give up on such easy extra money. I presume there would have to be some kind of a big ‘BUT’. A problem perhaps. In short, a specific reason that keeps people from renting out their space. Next, I added questions to specify when and for how long people would want to rent out their spaces. On average, that is. I had no idea if these people can rent out their spaces only once a month or every day.

It seemed now that it should be more or less ready. The survey was left for discussions with the whole team to determine whether everything was clear and understandable – must we add or remove something? At the meeting, we focused on the finishing touches for quite some time. As I mentioned in the previous part, the age ranges created passionate discussions. One might think that what can be so difficult to determine about age ranges, but as it turns out, it can be quite difficult. Each of us had a somewhat different view of what ranges to add there. But we did not find a particularly good solution either. With some other questions we also had this doubting feeling, as to is it clearly defined or might it be confusing to people. Because we were all doing this kind of survey for the first time, we decided to ask someone smarter to review the survey. And who else to ask than Ülle Pihlak. And of course, we got a lot of help from her. We were able to put an end to our age drama, because Ülle brought out some well-explained answer options, from which we would be able to read out specific information later. Well done! Now we can ask people for answers, with peace of mind. ”

Markus: “I warned you that it will be thorough!”

 

DEVELOPMENTS IN LANDING SHEET AND DESIGN

Gustav: “Time has moved by fast and in the meantime there have been developments with our landing page. Specifically, we have started to put more emphasis on the design and thinking about how we want our brand to be like visually. Initially, we started experimenting with colors. We tried colors that would fit well with our pictures. At first we tried light brown, but it didn’t seem to blend in and it wasn’t our style.

We also looked at other major players. We found one firm who had a red and white page that we really liked. It is a bold choice and it requires good design skills and good eyes to match the colors properly. We thought it would be a little too ‘in-your-face’ for us. But suddenly Markus and I got the idea to try out green. Sounds boring? No, believe me, it looks very cool! I can safely say that we tried at least 20 different shades of green on the landing page to find out what the perfect green is. It took a while, but it exists now. At the very beginning, we planned to make a black and white page, but then we realized that it would not give us any originality nor character, although it would look clean. So for the moment our wonderful light green, white and dark gray remained. We find that this pleasant and soft light green would highlight the mission of our company – a cleaner cityscape and urban space sharing.

I can’t wait for you all to see this wonderful color combination – it’s really good! For some, choosing colors may seem like a 10-minute topic, but believe me, it took a long time. Now we can tick off the colors at least. On the landing page, we want to introduce us to people who are not familiar with what we do through a blog. The landing page blog would be slightly more formal than it is here and would provide more substantial information about us. Of course, this does not mean that the open discussions would disappear from here – you can’t get rid of us that easily! Our plans are big and work continues. In a sense, the original logo is ready and the slogan is also peeking quietly, but about these in the next part! ”

Markus: “In conclusion – I HAVE AN UNBELIEVABLY GOOD TEAM! I am grateful to the point of heart failure that we came together and am fascinated by their work. They are all irreplaceable. They are all my favorite people. And I’m full of luck! CIAO!”