Talking to Humans: Success starts with understanding your customers

The first step in trying to learn from the market is having an opinion about who your market actually is. I recommend thinking about a few categories: The typical customer you envision if you get traction with your idea Your early adopter, i.e. the people who will take a chance on your product before anyone else Critical partners for distribution,

Founders commonly obsess about product at the expense of understanding the customer or the business model. You need to work on it all, and you have to challenge your thinking. Behind your startup is a belief system about how your business will work. Some of your assumptions will be right, but the ones that are wrong could crater your business.

First, I want you to walk a day in your customer’s shoes and actually go out and buy a pillow. Second, I want you to observe people in the process of buying a pillow. And third, I want you to talk directly to them.”

“Your job right now isn’t to sell, but rather to learn. You are right, though: getting the customer to speculate is rarely useful,” Samantha said. “You need to understand your market. How does your customer buy? When do they buy? Why do they buy? Where do they buy?

New founders tend to obsess about their mainstream customer (represented in the chart as the early and late majority). However, by definition, the mainstream is waiting for proof from early adopters before they try something. If you cannot get early adopters, you cannot move on. Early adopters are usually folks who feel a pain point acutely, or lov

“Buying. Observing. Talking. Do we really need to do all three? Can we really afford to spend the time?” “Can you afford not to? Each of the three approaches is imperfect, but together you should see patterns. By walking in your customer’s shoes you will gain empathy and personal understanding, but you don’t want to rely solely on your own experien

An online marketplace for plumbers might consider plumbers on the sell side, and home owners on the buy side

How much would you pay to make this problem go away? (this can lead to interesting answers as long as you don’t take answers too literally)

My recommendation is to set up a situation where the subject thinks they are actually buying something, even if they know the thing doesn’t exist yet. Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms are used by a lot of teams to test pre-order demand.

An interesting open-ended question, which Steve Blank likes to use to conclude his interviews, is: “What should I have asked you that I didn’t?”