They say that every challenge presents an opportunity, and for serial entrepreneur Colin Guinn, this proved to be the case with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Colin Guinn is a technology product development expert, having worked in the space his entire career. He started out tinkering with drones back when they were still just “helicopters on cameras,” and worked his way to the role of CEO and founder for the drone company DJI in North America. He went on to become the Chief Revenue Officer at 3D Robotics, where he contributed to the development and release of the GoPro-affiliated Solo drone, and then founded the startup Hangar Technology which was eventually acquired by AirMap.
Guinn has always had an entrepreneurial streak in him, admitting, “It’s always been in me to want to do my own thing and not have a real boss and a real job, and so I just always found ways to kind of have my own businesses.” He earned a degree at UT Austin in business and communication, but started out studying engineering. This initial exposure to engineering concepts gave him a foundation to work from when it comes to product development, so that he “knows enough to know what can be done,” and his product innovations stay grounded in practicality while still pushing the envelope.
While he values his educational experiences, Guinn emphasizes that his most valuable education happened “on the job.” After successfully establishing and scaling these multiple robotics and technology ventures, Guinn founded the accelerator, consultancy, and digital agency Guinn Partners four years ago.
Guinn Partners offers marketing and product development services to startups and established brands in the technology space. Guinn Partners was born from Guinn’s passion for helping entrepreneurs navigate the challenges of creating their initial product, raising money to support production, and generally aiding entrepreneurs through the whole process of going from an idea, to a product, to a successful company built around that product.
Guinn Partners has worked with hundreds of companies over the last four years making high-tech advantaged products for surfboards, drones, airplanes, and space tourism, and now, Gel Blaster. “We get to work on a lot of fun projects,” Guinn says, smiling. “And Gel Blaster was just a really fun project that came out of quarantine.”
Photo courtesy of Guinn Partners
Guinn has two young sons, who were 8 years old and 13 years old respectively during the COVID-19 lockdowns (now, they’re 9 and 14). His sons are blaster aficionados – they have all the blasters available on the market, from NERF guns to VR-augmented toys. When Guinn noticed his oldest son was getting really into Fortnite (a first-person shooter video game), he wanted to take him out to go paintballing so he could experience the real-life version of that kind of play. His son fell in love with the experience and they started paintballing all the time.
As a development expert, Guinn is always looking at product experiences through an analytical production lens. While he and his son enjoyed paintballing together, he still located a few pain points with the experience.
First of all, paintballing requires a considerable time investment, from reserving a time to play to driving out to the course and cleaning up after the event. It’s also quite expensive, and excludes some age groups – Guinn’s youngest son is a tough kid, but getting hit by a paintball is simply too intense for an 8-year-old.
Guinn started to investigate the market and look for a fun blaster experience that was accessible and appropriate for all ages, and that they could play in their backyard. The only potential option was an airsoft gun, but the BBs were too small to deliver the same kind of enjoyment as paintballing, are rather dangerous, and are also awful for the environment – Guinn describes the impossibility of cleaning up thousands of plastic BBs from the backyard.
After all of his research, he realized that there was a big hole in the blaster market. “I was very surprised to find that there seemed to be this real gap that existed from eight or nine years old when you graduated from NERF darts to thirteen or fourteen years old when you can start playing airsoft and paintball,” Guinn explained, elaborating that both paintball and airsoft pose a threat to the environment even once a child is old enough to participate. “So that’s where the original idea came from, where I was like, oh, I wonder if we could address that.”
While Guinn discovered the opportunity prior to COVID, he didn’t start working on Gel Blaster until the pandemic was in full swing.
Guinn Partners is used to making flying cars, robotics, and stratospheric balloons, but COVID and the associated lockdowns put many of their big projects on hold. Guinn didn’t want to lay anyone off, so, while they weren’t really specialists in the toy space, Guinn thought his team might as well use their sudden free time due to the pandemic to work on Gel Blaster and see if the idea had any potential.
Guinn’s team got to work on a prototype, first designing it and then 3D printing a model. They figured out a way to make biodegradable gel balls as ammo, which they call “Gellets,” so that the aftermath of a shooting session doesn’t harm the environment the way that paintballs and BBs do. Gel Blasters are fully automatic, shooting 10 shots per second, and the Gellets hurt just enough to create suspense in the game but not enough to leave a mark or welt. Because the hopper holds 800 rounds, games are not interrupted by constant reloading.
Once they had a prototype, Guinn made a dozen and invited the neighborhood kids over to test the product with his sons in their backyard. They loved it.
“We nailed it,” Guinn says, smiling. “It was just so fun.”
Photo courtesy of Guinn Partners
With the neighborhood kids’ rave reviews and multiple parents asking Guinn where they could buy their child their own Gel Blaster, Guinn knew that he had a product worth investing more time in. This was the first informal gauge of what Guinn believes is the most significant marker of early success; the statistic that either gives a product the green or red light for further development: the net promoter score.
If you’ve ever answered a survey asking how likely you are to recommend a product or brand to a friend, then you’ve been part of a data-gathering effort for a net promoter score. A net promoter score describes the likelihood that your consumers will recommend your product to their friends. Generally it’s on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 meaning you’re very likely to recommend a product and 1 meaning you’re unlikely to recommend it. When a product is able to earn a high net promoter score – over 7 at minimum – then that signals to Guinn that it’s a product worth developing and investing in.
Guinn explains that the net promoter score is significant because it tells you how well your product will sell “for free,” based only on word-of-mouth, before you spend any other money on advertising or customer acquisition.
Guinn compares a product to a pile of wood to start a fire, explaining that the net promoter score tells him how flammable the wood is. A high net promoter score reveals that adding fuel to the spark in the form of marketing efforts and dollars will get a healthy fire going.
Gel Blaster proved Guinn’s belief in the net promoter score’s importance. When they started selling Gel Blasters, Guinn could track the location of purchases being made. When a few purchases were made in one area, they’d see an uptick in purchases in that area shortly after. This was consistent with Guinn’s experience testing the Gel Blaster within his own neighborhood – once one kid had a Gel Blaster, the entire block needed them.
At the end of the day, the net promoter score indicates whether your product exceeds expectations and delivers your customer satisfaction. “If the product is awesome you can figure all the other stuff out,” Guinn explains. He admits that his product development process is unique, saying, “I like to work backwards.”
First, Guinn confirms that once the product ends up in a customer’s hands, they’ll absolutely love it. This was what he did when he 3D printed prototypes and let his sons and their friends try them out.
Next, he has to make sure that the price point is appropriate. He explains that part of your net promoter score will always be dependent on how much the customer has to invest in the product, or the “value exchange.” In other words, you must confirm that the cost of the product is commensurate with the value it delivers to your buyer. Part of this second phase of development also requires an understanding of whether a product is marketable or not – if the value of the product is demonstrable through videos and other remote advertising efforts.
In order to confirm that the value exchange and the marketability of the Gel Blaster was in place, Guinn took to Kickstarter. Traditionally a crowdfunding platform for products, Guinn advises against relying on the platform for funds. Instead, he believes it’s a tool for testing the “sellability” of your product. If you can demonstrate through text and videos that your product is valuable and price it appropriately so that complete strangers will literally put their money where their mouth is and back your project, then you’ve proven that your product will sell. And since Guinn works backwards, he already knew from his field tests and ‘net promoter score’ that after a customer purchases the product, they’ll have an excellent, satisfying experience. Gel Blaster’s success on KickStarter told Guinn that the type of fuel they had on hand – remote advertising through videos and text shared online – would be sufficient to set their very flammable wood aflame.
Gel Blasters will be available in major retailers across the US in 2022, and the fire is already burning at a healthy pace – right now, Gel Blaster’s biggest challenge is scaling. They have extremely high demand for the product while facing the supply chain issues that still linger from the start of the pandemic. But none of their current success was on Guinn’s mind when he began his journey developing the Gel Blaster product – he simply saw a potentially fun opportunity and got curious about whether or not it would work.
The Gel Blaster was not Guinn’s typical wheelhouse, but he explains that his journey with this product exemplifies an important lesson for the entrepreneur: don’t limit yourself by getting too hung up on the outcome of a venture.
Guinn funded Gel Blaster himself with a very attainable amount of money, describing his early mindset around the project saying, “What is the bare minimum that we can do that will validate this is a good idea, and then take the next step after that.” He was not too attached to the outcome from the start – which is what can end up being some entrepreneurs’ downfall.
“Oftentimes, people think that whatever their business is, that’s the thing that has to work. [They think], ‘I’m never going to get another opportunity again to try and scale a business, and this is my chance.’ Just know that there’s always new stuff being created and there’s always new opportunities. What I often see happen and what has happened to me multiple times in the past is that you really drill down onto this one thing that you want to build and you end up signing up for this uphill battle, when what ends up being actually more fun is test and fail, test and fail, test and fail, until you get it right, and then run with that idea,” Guinn explains.
Photo courtesy of Guinn Partners
He likes to think about his businesses as a board game. “You win some, you lose some, and a lot of times it’s about rolling the right dice,” he says, cautioning entrepreneurs against getting too attached to the win, which not only takes the fun out of the process, but also diminishes your productivity.
“When you’re holding onto the win so tightly, it becomes really hard to operate freely and with authenticity, and it becomes really easy to fool yourself into thinking it’s going to work out. Trust your gut,” he says, reminding entrepreneurs that a scarcity mentality is going to hurt them in the long run, and is also simply inaccurate. Using virtual reality as an example, Guinn points out that there are always new industries being created and new opportunities popping up. It’s up to the entrepreneur to know when to let go of an idea and trust that something else will be right around the corner if one concept doesn’t pan out.
So, when you come across a Gel Blaster in the store this year, remember that it’s proof that good ideas are plentiful – and might just emerge from one of your greatest challenges.
Written by Catherine Casem
Find Colin Guinn on LinkedIn and at Guinn Partners.
Find Gel Blaster on Facebook, Instagram, and Kickstarter.
