The dentist we have been working with shared his appointment logs with us and this is what we found based on "paper" records as a baseline for filling openings in their schedule. Using current methods of utilizing a patient standby list, moving patient appointments around, or contacting patients who were no shows:

October - 47 Cancellations, 76 Openings, 28 Total Slots Filled = 22.7%
Fulfillment Rate
November - 23 Cancellations, 62 Openings, 18 Total Slots Filled =
21.1% Fulfillment Rate

Our goal is to improve these numbers by at least 100% and get to a 50% fullfilment rate. Our schedule over the next few months:

February - Test our hypothesis utilizing manual methods. Hit our targets and begin developing a specification for our solution (V1.0)

March - Release V1.0 and test our results with our additional five dental partners and expand our testing to include the personal care industry. Determine business model, go-to-market strategy, and customer acquisition costs. CAC will be our biggest hurdle.

April - December - Scale? At least 100 paying customers. Buy Google.

With the holidays coming and family visiting it has been difficult scheduling time to engage with my first customer. I finally spent a day going through logistics, training, and preparing for the experiment. The pain is real and just yesterday there were two last minute cancellations that went unfilled. This is day two and I'm getting jump-start training on the different nuances of scheduling, phone manners, etc.. so key to the success of any service business.. over the next few weeks I will be establishing a benchmark on how effective their current method is to keep their calendar full and then hopefully build something v

Starting up is hard and giving real thought on taking that first step in customer development is even harder. During the past two weeks I have started to engage with my early partners. In the next two weeks I plan on providing my solution to one of them manually (i.e. I will be using my phone and remote access) to establish a benchmark and validate my theories. 

A lot has transpired over the last few weeks.. I graduated the Founder Institute on 10.8 (out of 30+ enrollees, five graduated)... my company, ThinqTeq, Conversation Media, CaringWise, EximFlo, and CodeStump... it was an amazing experience and life changer.. with the network of advisors and the support of my fellow graduates I'm ready to kick some a**...