Atma Connect, a California-based nonprofit that connects users in Indonesia with the goal of “warga bantu warga,” or neighbors helping neighbors, considers itself a lean startup.
“We were constantly asking our users what their daily challenges were and how we could build a product that could help them,” said the CEO, Meena Palaniappan, at the Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco last week.
The “lean startup” methodology shortens feedback loops by drawing on customer insights to iteratively build products or services to meet their needs. In the case of Atma Connect, the “minimum viable product,” or MVP, was an app to share water price information, but when users said they wanted to share information on other topics, from education to garbage to floods, the team pivoted and launched a hyperlocal social network.