Product Development, Market Fit & Minimum Viable Businesses with Chris McKleroy

Chris McKleroy is the founder and CEO of Nocs Provisions, a company which has reinvented binoculars. Chris is a successful entrepreneur with a proven track record of designing disruptive products and bringing them to market.

Prior to Nocs, Chris was the Head of Product and Co-Founder of Boombotix, one of the original Bluetooth personal speaker brands to enter the market. Chris helped scale the business from $200k to over $13 million in annual revenue. We discuss the lessons learned from massive growth, raising venture capital and what it was like partnering with Wu-Tang.

Chris and I discuss product development, prototyping and why product market fit is so critical. He shares his insights on how to bootstrap a business idea and talks about the importance of finding your MVB “Minimum Viable Business.” He shares his advice for overseas manufacturing and how to disrupt established markets with innovatively designed products.

If you like product development, direct-to-consumer marketing and design then I am sure you will love this episode.

Discussion Topics:

(1:28) Working with Wu-Tang.

(10:08) Business & design programs for Entrepreneurs.

(17:12) Scaling Boombotix to a $13 million business.

(24:12) Bootstrapping Nocs Provisions.

(30:51) Advice for Entrepreneurs.

(36:45) Product design process.

(44:46) Manufacturing products in China during COVID.

(58:10) Minimum Viable Business.

(59:00) Rapid fire questions.