Talking to Humans: Success starts with understanding your customers

To ask the right questions, you need to understand your risks and assumptions

I like to begin by understanding my most important, and most risky, assumptions. Those tend to be the areas where you need to gather insights most urgently. You can uncover your assumptions in a myriad of ways.

Customer discovery is about gaining much deeper insight into your customer, or your partners, or your market Being told your idea is cool is not useful; seeing behavior that validates your customer’s willingness to buy is very useful Prepare an interview guide before you get out of the building To ask the right questions, you need to understand you

My target customer will be? The problem my customer wants to solve is? My customer’s need can be solved with? Why can’t my customer solve this today? The measurable outcome my customer wants to achieve is? My primary customer acquisition tactic will be? My earliest adopter will be? I will make money (revenue) by? My primary competition will be? I w

It is more effective to ask your interview subject to share a story about the past.

While people are willing to grant time to polite people who ask for advice, you have an extra advantage if you are a student or academic researcher. In other words, if you are a student or researcher, say so. As an extra incentive, you might also offer to share the results of your research with your interview subjects.

Sometimes observation is as powerful as interviews

Some people like to ask, “if you could wave a magic wand and have this product do whatever you want, what would it do?” Personally, I avoid questions like this because customers are too constrained by their current reality to design effective solutions. It is the customer’s job to explain their behavior, goals, and challenges. It is the product des

time. I have found that it is extremely effective to ask people for their time, but for later, after the conference or meetup. Get their business card, let them get back to networking, and then have an in-depth conversation when it fits their schedule. Immediately after the conference while their memories are still fresh, send them a short email th