The Muffin Company - 3

2026-07-09

We are getting through this well, we have:

  1. A company
  2. Some back of the napkin math and market research
  3. Funding of some kind (or we are working for free)

We are getting to my favorite part of the muffin start up, building an MVP (maybe a muffin viable product?) or an MMVP (minimum muffin viable product). I love building stuff, I am an engineer at heart (or a baker) and I love making stuff with my hands and mind.

So I buy some ingredients, I wake up extra early, and I start with one recipe. Perhaps blueberry? I mix the battery lovingly, add in the blueberries last, and make a dozen perfect blue berries. And I really do think building in the easy part of the start up, at least for me. Perhaps idea are also easy, I have lots of ideas, most of them terrible. So in my mind the easy parts are ideas and building stuff, or in the muffin case the easy part is thinking about muffins or muffin recipes and baking.

And we really have some muffins (imaginary ones), and honestly in real life I could do all of this pretty easily. I know how to bake, there are recipes on the internet, I could do some back of the napkin math.

The hard part comes next, and that is marketing. I think this is where I fail most often, I am learning about it and will eventually get better. So you have some delicious muffins, perhaps the most delicious muffins in the world, who cares? No one knows about the muffins, no one will pay for the muffins. All of my ventures have failed on this marketing steps (and honestly the pre-MVP market research that you are supposed to do). Sometimes you build things that no one wants or sometimes you build things and can’t tell anyone about it.

But sorry I am jumping ahead a little bit, with my perfect dozen of muffins I have a good idea. I call (or probably text or whatsapp) all of my friends and family. I ask them ‘hey, I made some muffins and am starting a muffin company, would you want to try a muffin for free and give me feedback?’ and hopefully I would get a few responses. If I reach out to 100 friends or family (lets be honest I dont have 100 friends or family that I would ask, I am not the best at self promotion as well) perhaps 10 of them would answer (that is my annecodotal percentage, 10%). So ten people come over, most of them will be polite: ‘Ohh these are delicious’, ‘I wouldn’t change a thing’. These is great but not that helpful. I read this book a while ago: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Past-Negotiating-Difficult-Situations/dp/0553371312 and it is a sales book. But part of the message is that people are polite until you charge them money, they will say ‘Ohh this is great’, ‘I would definitely pay for this’. But until you start charging you can’t trust them. And out of the ten people one or two will give constructive feedback: ‘blueberry is a boring flavor’, ‘this needs more sugar’.

And so we have moved one step closer to having a muffin company. We have an batch of muffins and some feedback from friends and family.

-Gary