This past weekend, I travelled to Toronto for the launch of Venture for Canada’s six-week Solopreneurship Program. The two-day kick-off brought together conversations about the future of independent work, refining your offer, and opportunities to learn from people building ventures of their own.
The timing felt right because we are working with a student team through Venture for Canada’s Intrapreneurship Program. They are supporting us with market research for a waste sorting web application we are developing, helping us better understand the problem, the audience, and the potential opportunity, which is also what I’ll be focusing on through the Solopreneurship Program.
I came home with plenty of notes, but one question matters most for the work ahead:
Is the waste sorting application we are developing a viable business opportunity and is it worth continuing to invest in?
Over the next six weeks, I’ll be taking what I learn through the program to help answer that question.
Start with the audience
One of my biggest takeaways from the weekend was the importance of understanding your audience.
It’s easy to experience a problem yourself and assume other people experience it the same way. Building something useful requires going further. Who has this problem? How are they dealing with it now? And is the problem significant enough that people want a better solution?
Those are questions we need to explore as we develop our waste sorting application.
The application is intended to help homeowners build confidence that they are putting their waste in the right place. As we continue developing it, we’ll be inviting people in Pictou County to test the application and tell us about their experience.
That feedback will help us understand not only how the application should work, but whether we are solving a problem people actually care about.
Build with people, not just for them
Customer feedback shouldn’t come only after a product is finished. It can help shape the product while it is still being developed.
Instead of spending all of our time explaining what we have built, we can ask people what they find useful, what is confusing, what they expected to see, and what is missing.
For our application, testing is about more than finding technical problems. It is a form of user discovery.
We want to understand how people currently sort their waste, where they run into uncertainty, and whether the application makes that process easier. What we learn can then inform the next version, and whether there should be a next version at all.
Test an idea early and fast
Dominik Loncar’s “Think in Pilots” session focused on identifying customer problems and designing small, low-risk tests that can move an idea forward. Before making a large investment in an idea, find a smaller way to test your assumptions.
It’s a little like trying a recipe before cooking it for a room full of guests. A small batch gives you an opportunity to see what works, identify what needs adjusting, and decide whether the recipe is worth making again.
Businesses can take a similar approach.
A pilot or minimum viable product (MVP) can help you test whether people understand your offer, whether they find it useful, and whether their behaviour matches what you expected. Instead of relying entirely on assumptions, you begin collecting evidence that can guide where you invest your time and resources.
That is how I want to approach the waste sorting application. The goal at this stage isn’t to prove that the original idea is right. It is to learn enough to make a better decision about what comes next.
Practice explaining your value
Jay Reid’s “You’re Worth It” session focused on articulating your offer, receiving feedback from peers, and becoming more comfortable hearing “no.”
That matters because knowing an idea well doesn’t necessarily mean you can explain its value clearly.
When someone asks, “Who is this for?” or “Why would I use it?” and the answer takes several minutes to explain, that is useful information. Their questions can reveal where the value proposition still needs work.
Confidence can grow through that process: explain the idea, listen to the response, adjust, and try again.
You don’t need to have every word perfected before talking about your idea. In fact, those conversations can help you find the words.
Keep your roots and widen your circle
Another takeaway had less to do with a particular session and more to do with being there.
Building relationships outside Pictou County and Nova Scotia can create new possibilities.
Being in Toronto put me around people with different experiences, businesses, skills, and ways of approaching problems. It gave me an opportunity to step outside my usual surroundings and consider the idea from a different perspective.
A wider network doesn’t mean leaving your community behind. It can mean bringing more ideas, connections, and knowledge back to it.
Someone outside your immediate circle may see a different way to approach a problem, identify an assumption you haven’t questioned, or point to a skill or connection you need next.
One idea I came home wanting to hold onto is the importance of continuing to reimagine what I’m capable of building.
The next six weeks
Now the work is to put these lessons into practice.
Over the remainder of the Solopreneurship Program, I want to better understand the people this application is intended to support, invite them into the development process, test our MVP, and pay attention to what the evidence tells us.
At the end of that process, success doesn’t necessarily mean deciding to turn the application into a business.
Success could also mean discovering that the opportunity needs to change, that we have a different customer, or that the idea isn’t worth pursuing further.
That is part of entrepreneurship.
The goal is to come away with enough information to make the next decision with greater confidence than I could today.
If you live in Pictou County and are interested in signing up to test and help shape our waste sorting application, email us at info@rootedgatherings.ca with the subject line “Waste Sorting Web Application”.