How to Upgrade an MVP to the Market-Ready Product Track & Trust with the support of BlockStart

Martin Schäffner

6 November 2020

Track and Trust successfully completed the BlockStart accelerator program, which initially started in March 2020. We want to look back on the last six months and share how we upgraded Track & Trust from an MVP to a market-ready product.

It all started at the ideation Kick-Off in March, where many startups presented their innovative products and solutions. It was an excellent chance for us to see how so many different companies intend to use blockchain for their services and gave us the opportunity to talk to startups that could be interested in testing our blockchain-based supply chain solution. As it turned out, we would see three of them back in September during the Pilot Stage.

Scope and Implementation Phase

Our goal during the BlockStart accelerator program was ambitious – we wanted to upgrade Track & Trust from an MVP to a market-ready product. After we successfully made it to the next round, we defined our four KPIs:

  • Implement an onboarding process in which users can self-register. During the MVP, we created the Keystore files by ourselves and sent it to our test-users. A self-registration process is one of the main requirements in a decentralized system. In addition to that, we also created profiles that are linked to a specific address.
  • Enable Multi-tenancy in the system. We want to limit the accessibility of information to only the respective users and their respective data. This increases privacy, security, and provides a clearer and smoother user-journey. 
  • Make the Track and Trust interface dynamic. There were many hard-coded processes and interface-artifacts developed for the MVP. The contents on the different interfaces should dynamically show the data for the respective shipment. 
  • Enable mobile-signing.  In order to reduce data load and improve usability, we need a mobile app that contains the identity information as well as the private keys of the actor. As a result, handovers can be processed by scanning QR-Codes of the shipment without the need to document this on a computer.

During the implementation phase, we talked with many potential adopters that could perform tests with us in the pilot stage. These talks and the progress of implementation were the main topics in frequent calls with our mentor Joao Fernandes.

Testing with Adopters

After we successfully finished the implementation stage, we had the chance to test Track and Trust together with three adopters that we talked to during the implementation phase. This was Albicchiere, an Italy-based startup that runs a supply chain for refill packages of their wine dispenser, Go Limpets, a Portuguese-based company that sells sea food to the gastronomy, and Zelena Tocka, a Slovenian company whose supply chains manage the production and selling of local agriculture goods. 

The objectives of the test were to perform a test with all three adopters through every stage of Track and Trust. As a result, we were very happy to see that they had no issues in testing Track and Trust and that the system would bring an advantage over their competitors. Another main takeaway for us was recognizing the versatility of the use cases Track and Trust can apply. 

Take a look at our newest product video of Track & Trust:

The BlockStart accelerator program gave us the best chances to improve our product, get to know potential adopters, and receive valuable feedback that we will implement in the future. We thank the BlockStart organizers, and especially our mentor, Joao, for the smooth and successful guidance and communication during the program, as well as the three adopters for testing Track and Trust.