‘Invite self doubt into your life’: an interview with Daniel Rivenbark

As a Senior Manager II at Walmart Facilities Maintenance, you might be surprised to hear that Daniel Rivenbark does quite a bit of his shopping elsewhere. “I’m very guilty of going to WholeFoods,'' he says, “I’m indirectly supporting Jeff Bezos on that front.” 

Though a discussion of preferred supermarket chains may seem like an unusual opening to an interview, the choice to back a (relatively) smaller company with innovative ideas is reflective of Daniel’s career. Before joining the team at Walmart he was a Program Manager at Coplex, helping startups develop their ideas, reach the ‘seed ready’ stage, and bring their products to the market. Defining himself overall as a ‘risk coach’, Daniel recently sat down with The Official Pretotyping Podcast hosts Jonathan Sun and Robert Skrobe to explain this definition, what he believes is the difference between data and opinion, and to offer listeners his top tips for getting started with innovation. 

A keen and experienced pretotyper, Daniel’s interview includes some pretty valuable insights: 

1. Understanding your end customer is key.

When dealing with stakeholders in previous roles, Daniel explains that the question had always been: “are people willing to put dollars behind this?”. In comparison, his current role at Walmart means he now has to communicate and appeal to people who don’t have a monetary stake in the product, but rather those who are looking for day-to-day usefulness. “Their skin in the game is now a time commitment”, he explains, stating that he needs to appeal to “their willingness to pilot the solution, dedicate time to feedback and feedback sessions.”

Being able to recognise, research and respond to the specific needs of the end customer has been key to Daniel’s success. He encourages listeners to use pretotyping principles within the discovery process as well, and not just throughout the product development phase. 

2. The difference between data and opinion is behaviour.  

When asked to expand on his definition of the difference between data and opinion (you can also hear our thoughts on this topic here), Daniel says the following: “In all honesty, I feel that some of it comes down to being more of an art than a science.” “If you can get a statistically significant number of people to identify with something and really take up for that, it kind of evolves into being data rather than opinion.” 

“At the same time, I like to really think about this as behaviour. [...] if people are really willing to go and use something, they do use it [...] that's a measure that communicates hard data, right? Someone telling me that they would go do something, that’s a little bit softer, it’s an opinion. There’s no behaviour yet attached to that action.” 

Keeping this in mind when evaluating the results of pretotypes can help you to better understand the data you’ve collected and find out if your product idea is something that your audience will actually use.

3. Leverage your network.

In the second half of the interview, Jonathan and Robert ask Daniel for his advice for anyone who is interested in pretotyping but who isn’t sure where to start. He suggests that a really great first step is to cultivate a network around you that includes other founders and innovators who have the experience to help you grow. “I feel like with a lot of early-stage founders, they can save themselves a lot of time, money and hard learning by going and talking to other people who've executed in a similar space.” 

Daniel also suggests that building this network could give you access to their networks as well, which they might be “willing to leverage to point you in the right direction to get a lot of that early feedback.” He believes that this “is often a really good first step because a lot of these people have unique insights into what the trends are, how things are going, and what gaps currently exist.”

4. It’s okay to fail. 

“A lot of early-stage founders [become] almost obsessed with product development instead of getting validation from a market that they actually need”, Daniel explains, highlighting how he has used pretotyping to break through that behaviour. The key to this is in teaching people that “it's okay to fail”, he explains. “You know, failure is the father of success, and sometimes he comes first. Changing that mindset [...] and getting them to understand that it's okay to go get really harsh feedback and have people tell you that they don't identify with what you're doing [...] is just a part of the process.”

Daniel believes that “self-doubt is something that founders, in general, need to just invite into their lives and keep as a constant because it keeps you very careful footed and you don't get too big for your shoes.” 

Connecting back to his thoughts surrounding failure and the importance of validating your idea before you try to build it, he encourages new innovators and founders to not become overly confident if things look good initially. Switching your mindset to one that welcomes failure and celebrates it as the next step to building a better, more efficient and effective product is key to successful innovation (you can read more about how to engage this mindset here).

You can listen to Daniel’s interview with The Official Pretotyping Podcast in full on Spotify, Google Podcasts or Youtube. 

Interested in how pretotyping could help improve your innovation strategy? Contact us to learn more or sign up for a free preview of our online course to get started!