[Live Case Study]: Building a Quiz-based Tool for Understanding Audience Profile as a Non-technical Founder

(This is a live case study, updated periodically). 

It's been almost 4 years since I booked the bizlite domain. Since then, it has transformed from a simple marketing blog for small businesses, into a hub for everything related to Shark Tank (during S01 & S02), and eventually into a virtual business card solution for small businesses. 

This story is about the next version of bizlite - a dashboard to help anyone discover their calling, understand their natural inclination, and build/grow their small business into something enviable. 

The Seeds of an Idea. 

I've long despised the coaching & YouTube community for pushing youngsters into anything with the approach that anyone with an internet connection can earn crores if they bought a course or a machinery to start a small business. 

I've wrote a lot about the mindset on LinkedIn and even Medium since 2020. 

But little did I knew then that everyone in India would be pushed down a spiral of funnels with courses and false promises of glory in the name of 'hustle'. 

Now, almost everyone I know is following some 'guru' trying to figure out a way to become a millionaire. 

Even I got offers to launch my 'freelancing course'. But I could never fathom the thought that how a 'rigid' success formula can be fit into the dynamic circumstances of a human. Anyway, that's a thought for some other day. 

Now, I wanted a better world - if not a world, a better approach so that I can guide people to start something they really want to do. But not a course. So, I devised a way to first understand if someone is actually committed to do something, and if they're, they're fit enough to follow the path to the end. 

During the time, I worked with Ananthan & Azhar at AbleAlly.in where we tried to emphasise on the same idea - not everyone is the same and you must know your 'calling' before falling into the rat race.

Their solution categorized young graduates into an intrapreneur or an entrepreneur personality type. We progressed a lot into our understanding of how we can set up efficient teams where entrepreneurs can hire intrapreneurs to build great things. 

For the sad (and capitalist) world we live in, the idea couldn't fly off. But I got an idea.

I'd build a tool/algorithm that would ask users of their opinions (in life), ascertain a personality, share the best business ideas for them, and provide a mentorship dashboard that would guide them at every step till the point they don't find their first customer. 

The idea was amazing and I went on to announce about Itara, my first product on LinkedIn 

This was pre-ChatGPT era.

And like every solopreneur, I struggled to bite the apple.

Though I had helped hundreds of brands go from zero to one (biggest one registering an annual revenue of over 1 CR in just 2 years from just an idea), I couldn't help myself with Itara. 

Itara stayed just as a notion template that helped me consult a 'young entrepreneurs' get to market-ready status for about two years. Mainly because I didn't know how to code. 

But the regret made me go back to my original idea - a tool that would help people know what they should start. 

And that's how I came up with the idea of Typiz - an online personality quiz that tells you what business idea is perfect for you. 

What is Typiz? 

To be continued...