Sramana Mitra: I’m trying to get to a little bit of a methodology here. Oftentimes, you do get positive bias or negative bias. It sounds like you were getting a false negative in this case where you were convinced about your own pain point, but the people you were talking to were giving you false negatives. But you still went ahead. Was there a segmentation error?

Natalie Youn: There definitely was.

Sramana Mitra: That’s usually the case when you have a false negative, but you have a strong sense that you do have a real opportunity here.

Natalie Youn: Right. That was because my sample size was so small and it was limited to my friends and family. If I had a much wider audience to choose from, I would have had more parameters to filter down to the right segment. It would have been people who live in apartments who have dogs and also work. The people I asked didn’t work or were retired. They didn’t need it.

Sramana Mitra: You had enough conviction that you went ahead and launched it anyway. What about the other ideas?

Natalie Youn: It’s been so long I actually forgot. That’s an interesting question because from this original business, there was another opportunity two years down the road. We were shipping a perishable product across the US. There are some complaints. There’s an opportunity for something else that’s better. Then we developed another product.

Sramana Mitra: How did you go to market with DoggieLawn?

Natalie Youn: I built a website. Then it was more grass roots. I did some handouts and brochures. I posted them in areas where I knew there was high-traffic for dog owners.

Sramana Mitra: For example?

Natalie Youn: Dog parks. I lived in an area where there were a lot of apartments. There were areas dedicated for dogs. I would leave my brochures there. Security would come by and remove it and tell me I can’t leave them. I found out what worked and what didn’t work. It was more about trying everything. I am very much into trying and seeing what sticks.

Sramana Mitra: You were alone at this point?

Natalie Youn: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What year was that?

Natalie Youn: 2011.

Sramana Mitra: You were doing this as a solo entrepreneur?

Natalie Youn: Yes. So I did the website. I did Amazon. I remember getting my first call from someone who had a puppy. They had seen our website. I also started getting sales trickling through Amazon. It was interesting because that was the time when e-commerce was still relatively new. It’s not like what it is today.

Sramana Mitra: What digital marketing channels did you come up with that were producing for you?

Natalie Youn: At that time, it was basically a website. I wasn’t doing any advertising.

Sramana Mitra: It was pure organic traffic.

Natalie Youn: Yes, and Amazon.

Sramana Mitra: What were people looking for? This was not a category that existed.

Natalie Youn: Somehow, I had popped up through organic search on pee pads, puppy, and potty training. I started seeing sales through Amazon, which makes sense. Amazon reaches such a huge audience. People can look and see products. The timing was right, because there wasn’t as much competition on Amazon.

Sramana Mitra: Amazon was new at that time. Amazon marketplace was your primary driver, right?

Natalie Youn: It was. My internet business started to grow as well organically. I was extremely lucky because I wasn’t doing advertising at that time. Nowadays, you need to.