Get out of the building

The art of being a great entrepreneur is finding the right balance between vision and reality

Every new business idea is built upon a stack of assumptions. It is better to challenge your risky assumptions right at the start. You challenge anything by getting out of the building

Talk directly to your customers and partners, and observe their behavior

Run experiments in which you put people through an experience and track what happens

Customer discovery is not asking people to design your product for you. It is not about abdicating your vision. It is not about pitching

Your job in customer discover is to learn. You are a detective

You are looking for clues that help confirm or deny your assumptions

Look for patterns that will help you make better decisions

Be brave, get out of the building, and go talk to real human beings

If you want to be successful bringing something to market, you need to understand the market. Do you feel like you know when and why people ... today?

Founders commonly obsess about product at the expense of the understanding the customer or the business model

List out the riskiest hypothesis

Walk a day in your customers shoes

Observe people in the process of doing what your product does

Talk directly to them

Your job is to learn. Getting the customer to speculate is rarely useful. You need to understand the market. How does your customer buy? When do they buy? Why do they buy? Where do they buy?

If you are polite and creative, people will be more receptive to you than you might think

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 experience

By watching people, you can witness honest behavior, but you won't be able to get into their heads to know their motivations

By talking to people, you gather intel on both behavior and motivation, but you have to be careful not to take what you hear too literally

Ask your friends if they will refer you to their friends. It's best to talk to people who aren't too close to you. You don't want a someone's affection for you to steer what they have to say

It always makes sense to prioritize what you want to learn

Hello, I am a software engineer at Google researching note taking. I'm asking people about the last time they wrote something down. Would you mind if I asked a few questions? When was the last time you wrote something down? Why did you need to write it down? How did you decide where to write it? Why did you decide that medium? After you wrote it down, how did you feel about where you chose to write it? Are you willing to try a new medium anytime soon?

Seek out an advisor for first time entrepreneurs

Read reviews for competitors to figure out what they value in the product

It's easy to say something is cool. It's another thing to actually buy

Calculate metrics from your observations to prevent you from letting innate biases override your actual results

Don't take any of your statistics too literally and don't let any single number dominate your strategic thinking

Try driving traffic through Google or Facebook ads, and run some A/B tests around ad copy, landing-page messaging and price points. Study your metrics. Then follow up with your customers and interview them on their buying process and decision

You are in search of a scalable and repeatable business model

Run experiments and keep in mind that your mission is to learn before you scale. Don't stop talking directly to customers. Your questions will likely evolve, but no matter what stage you are in, you'll usually find that your best insights will come from talking to real people and observing real behavior

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 your risks and assumptions

Get creative when trying to recruit people—if at first you don't succeed, try something new

Sometimes observation is as powerful as interviews

Take good notes, especially on your key risks, so that you can calculate metrics later. Even better, set your target goals ahead of time

Bring learning back and analyze your patterns as a team

Never stop asking hard questions about your business

Questions to start from:

Who do you want to learn from?

What do you want to learn?

How will you get to them?

How can you ensure an effective session?

How do you make sense of what you learn?

Market category recommendations

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, fulfillment, or other parts of your business

If you cannot get early adopters, you cannot move on to the mainstream

Early adopters are usually folks who feel a pain point acutely, or love to try new products and services

Go into every customer interview with a prepared list of questions

Choose questions based on the most important, and most risky assumptions to gather those insights most urgently

Get stories, not speculation. Be careful with speculation. Humans are spectacularly bad at predicting their future behavior

Ask open-ended questions. Your goal is to talk little and get the other people sharing openly

Try to ask questions that start with words like who, what, why, and how. Avoid questions that share with is, are, would, and do you

'What should I have asked you that I didn't?' - Steve Blank

People don't honestly think about willingness to pay unless they feel like it is a real transaction

Interpret reactions with a degree of skepticism

Ask questions about behavior and challenges first, so that the discussion about product features do not poison or take over the conversation

It is the customer's job to explain their behaviors, goals, and challenges. It is the product designer's job to come up with the best solution

People are often very willing to help out. This is especially true if you are working on a topic that interests them and you approach them nicely and professionally

Recruiting interview candidate guidelines:

Try to get one degree of separation away (don't interview your mom, your uncle, or you best friends)

Be creative (and don't expect people to come to you)

Fish where the fish are (and not where they are not)

You should use referrals as much as possible. Set a goal of walking out of every interview with 2 or 3 new candidates

Finding bored people stuck in line is a common recruiting hack

People will not think you are rude if you carry yourself well and act professionally

Do your interviews in person

A huge percentage of human communication is non-verbal

When you start, concisely explain why you are there, and thank them for the time

Start with one or two easy warm up questions

Go into each session prepared to hear things that you might not want to hear

Get people to tell stories about how they experienced a problem area in the past

Try to find out if they have tried to solve the problem. What triggered their search for a solution? How did they look for a solution? What did they

Try to find out if they have tried to solve the problem. What triggered their search for a solution? How did they look for a solution? What did they think the solution would do, before they tried it? How did that particular solution work out? And if they are struggling to remember specifics, help them set the scene of their story: what part of the year or time of day? Were you with anyone?

Listen, don't talk

Don't be afraid to ask for clarifications and the 'why' behind the 'what.'

Dig into their stories first, and gather any feedback second

Ask them up-front to be brutally honest, and explain that it is the very best way for them to help you

You need to put people through an actual experience and watch their behavior or try to get them to open their wallet

You don't want to react too strongly to any single person's comments

It is not the job of the customer to design your product. It is yours

People will want to be helpful and nice, and your brain will want to hear nice things. As you are weighing what you have learned, just keep this in mind

You need to start with vision. You need to start with how you want to improve the world and add value to people's lives

Dream big. Be passionate. Just be ruthless with your ideas and assumptions

Assumptions Exercise

https://s3.amazonaws.com/TalkingtoHumans/Talking+to+Humans+Assumptions+Exercise.pdf

My target customer will be? (Tip: how would you describe your primary target customer)

The problem my customer wants to solve is? (Tip: what does your customer struggle with or what need do they want to fulfill)

My customer's need can be solved with? (Tip: give a very concise description / elevator pitch of your product)

Why can’t my customer solve this today? (Tip: what are the obstacles that have prevented my customer from solving this already)

The measurable outcome my customer wants to achieve is? (Tip: what measurable change happens in your customer’s life that makes them love your product)

My primary customer acquisition tactic will be? (Tip: you will likely have multiple marketing channels, but there is often one method, at most two, that dominates your customer acquisition — what is your current guess)

My earliest adopter will be? (Tip: remember that you can’t get to the mainstream customer without getting early adopters first)

I will make money (revenue) by? (Tip: don’t list all the ideas for making money, but pick your primary one)

My primary competition will be? (Tip: think about both direct and indirect competition)

I will beat my competitors primarily because of? (Tip: what truly differentiates you from the competition?)

My biggest risk to financial viability is? (Tip: what could prevent you from getting to breakeven? is there something baked into your revenue or cost model that you can de-risk?)

My biggest technical or engineering risk is? (Tip: is there a major technical challenge that could get in the way of actually building your product?)

What assumptions do we have that, if proven wrong, would cause this business to fail?