Customer Discovery for Early-Stage Startups

FIND THE WANTCUSTOMER DISCOVERY

liz@grovelabs.io | @lizco Liz Cormack

Hi, I’m Liz.

Grow what you eat.

KNOW THE USER

MAKE THEM HAPPY

What I do:

KNOW THE USER | Data, research, user testing. Pursue a substantiated understanding of the way a person uses, lives with and perceives the experience we create.

MAKE THEM HAPPY

What I do:

What I do:KNOW THE USER

MAKE THEM HAPPY | Product design, management. Work across disciplines + departments to make that experience entirely positive.

Three years ago, Grove was just

a really complicated idea we weren’t sure anyone wanted.

“Am I building something people want?”

Probably not 😬

And that’s totally fine. Start testing and revising your hypothesis now.

Product market fit takes time.

Where can you create value?

Customer validation also proves your idea is worthy of investment.

Where can you create value?

TEST THE PROBLEM

TEST THE SOLUTION

Customer Discovery

TEST THE PROBLEM | User research, market research. Test your understanding of the customer’s needs.

TEST THE SOLUTION

Customer Discovery

Customer Discovery:TEST THE PROBLEM

TEST THE SOLUTION | Prototyping, user testing. Test that your solution solves the customer’s need that you identified.

It’s a cycle.

Methods for Customer Discovery

PART ONE: TEST THE PROBLEM

Before you write a line of code.

What problem are you solving?

1 | Leave the Building

2 | Pitch the Product You Don’t Have

3 | Listen, Listen, Listen

4 | Sell the Product You Don’t Have

5 | Poach from Competitors

Leave the building.

REMEMBER THIS #1

Thanks to: Steve Blank

OBJECTIVES

Test my value proposition (am I building a thing people care about?)

Identify pain points + opportunities in my assumed market segment.

Things you need:

1. A list of questions. 2. A hypothesis you’re willing to change.

Things you don’t need:

1. Understanding of the customer’s problem. 2. Existing customers.

At ModCloth, we talk to people when we first have an idea. At this phase, our goal is to understand customers’ current problems around this idea and how they deal with an issue we’re trying to solve.

MODCLOTH

Google’s answer for the complexity of AdWords was to hire 2,000 account managers to help people use the platform. Pratt said one of the main reasons for user confusion is that the terminology used by the various platforms is wildly different.

ADHAWK

Rica Elysée founded Boston Naturals, a meet-up group for women of color. There, she realized many had the same issues with their salons — overbookings, late or canceled appointments or just a general disappointment with how their hair turned out.

BEAUTYLYNK

Parker is second-generation pharmacist who grew up behind the counter of his father’s mom-and-pop drug store in Concord, N.H. Whenever he went out to deliver prescriptions, he grew frustrated watching as customers used Excel spreadsheets and day-of-the-week pill containers to keep track of their medications.

PILL PACK

Feel your customer’s pain.

Leave the building.

REMEMBER THIS #1

Thanks to: Steve Blank

My two golden rules of user research:

1. Immersion is better than any other tactic.

2. Ask open-ended questions ONLY.

1. Immersion is better than any other tactic. If you're interviewing people outside of the environment in which they'll be using your product, you're missing 70% of the observations you could be making.

2. Ask open-ended questions ONLY. The fastest way to ruin insight is to ask a leading question. Ask who, what, why, when, where, how. Ask people to walk you through a scenario in their own words.

Tips for discovery conversations:

1. Get into research character. 2. Be fascinated. 3. Be neutral and encouraging. 4. Don’t judge or dismiss. 5. Build on the conversation. 6. When in doubt, clarify. 7. Listen, don’t lead. 8. Don’t pitch. 9. Watch body language. 10. Practice!

Set up a landing page, collect emails. Now!

OBJECTIVES

Test my value proposition (am I solving a problem people care about?)

Get e-mail addresses (who cares about the problem I’m solving?)

Things you need:

1. A URL. 2. A value proposition. 3. A mailing list tool.

1. A logo. 2. A blog, social media accounts etc. 3. A copywriter, designer, developer etc.

Right now, do one thing well.

REMEMBER THIS #2

WHAT’S THE ONE THING?

Identify your core value proposition. Go hard on that one thing.

GET THE WORD OUT

Post to social media, contact friends + family to share with their networks, email your own network, pursue startup promotional sites like ProductHunt.com and betalist.com.

PURSUE CONTACT INFO

Landing pages are carefully designed to optimize for conversion. At an early stage, just a name + email is super valuable (see next steps).

WHAT DOES VALIDATION LOOK LIKE?

That depends.

NOT SEEING USER GROWTH?

Consider backtracking to simplify and dig into the customer discovery process.

NOT SEEING USER GROWTH?

Leave the building again. Constantly verify > adapt > verify > adapt.

launchrock.com + mailchimp.com

So, now you have emails!

Contact them immediately and ask if you can discuss your problem and idea.

OBJECTIVES

Test my value proposition (am I solving a problem people care about?)

Find out why people were interested in signing up for my product or service.

Get direct feedback on our proposed solution.

Things you need:

1. A screener survey. 2. Specific questions.

1. A product. 2. A prototype. 3. Incredible people skills.

#1: Screener Survey. You don’t have time to talk to just anyone. A screener survey identifies:

1. People in your target market. 2. A diversity of perspectives to interview. 3. People eligible to use your product (age etc)

#2: Specific Questions. Use open ended discovery questions to identify users existing behaviors + motivations around whatever you’re digging into.

#2: Specific Questions. For example, if I was working on a new thermostat:

1. What kind of home do you live in currently? 2. When temperatures get hot or cold, how do

you stay comfortable in your house. 3. How has that changed in the last 6 months? 4. How did you prepare for your last trip? Walk

me through it.

Insight: users don’t care about the science.We thought people would love to learn.

Insight: users take pride in their space, and it needs to be beautiful.

Insight: early adopters are invested in the entire ecosystem of sustainability.

Insight: users already garden.

We thought we’d teach non-gardeners to garden.

Thoughts on surveys.

Surveys are great if you want to…

1. Track changes over time — See what changes before and after a feature launch.

2. Quantify issues seen in user studies — We know [x] is a problem for some users, but how many?

3. Measure attitudes, intents, or task success.

Thanks to: Elizabeth Ferrall-Nunge, UX at Twitter

Surveys are not so great if you want to…

1. Discover underlying user needs — users aren’t great at self-identifying.

2. Understand whether people can successfully use your product.

3. Uncover user habits and behavior. Again, people are really bad at self-reporting.

1. Immersion is better than any other tactic. If you're interviewing people outside of the environment in which they'll be using your product, you're missing 70% of the observations you could be making.

2. Ask open-ended questions ONLY. The fastest way to ruin insight is to ask a leading question. Ask who, what, why, when, where, how. Ask people to walk you through a scenario in their own words.

Some insight is better than none, but beware your solution bias when writing surveys.

Something we’ve definitely done wrong at Grove (and I’ve now seen many times).

Survey Tips:

1. Avoid leading questions. 2. Avoid agree/ disagree statements. 3. Beware photos + visual design. 4. Avoid comparison questions. 5. Randomize answer order. 6. Keep it short. 7. Avoid “nice-to-know” questions.

Will customers pay for this?

Things you need:

1. A prototype or product concept. 2. A way to accept payment.

1. An actual product. 2. A final price point. 3. Sales people.

Empty Wooden Box

Artificially Planted

Empty Wooden Box

Artificially Planted

No Idea How Much to Charge

Result: Sold three units at $800+.

(The final product sold for $2400).

It’s not validation if there are no stakes.

It’s okay to sell a non-existent product. Make sure you can reimburse the user! But go for the real sale, in which the user thinks they’ve traded cold hard cash for your product or service.

After selling? We refined our roadmap and let our customers know, giving them to chance to opt-out if they didn’t want to wait 8 months.

Do things that don’t scale.

REMEMBER THIS #3

Optimize for learning.

That means doing everything in your power to prove a hypothesis before building in response to it.

Looks automatic.

Super not automatic.

Super informative!

Optimize for learning.

REMEMBER THIS #4

Talk to their users. What do users love? What do users want, and not get?

AirBnB got started by “what would people user if AirBnB didn’t exist? — Craigslist, where their users were already looking for apartment rentals.

They scraped apartment data and put it on their own site, then pitched those apartment owners on using AirBnB as well.

We started testing all of our (few) competitors products at home + at the office.

Analyze the competitive landscape.

Your users certainly are. What’s your specific segment you can address better than anyone?

Criteria A

Criteria B

Criteria 2Criteria 1

Low Yield

High Yield

AutomatedDIY

“Am I building something people want?”

“and will pay for?”

Confirm that yes, you are — or pivot.

Listen more than you talk.

REMEMBER THIS #5

liz.j.cormack@gmail.com @lizco

Get in touch!

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