31–40 of 116 posts
Let me assume that you have a consumer product -- an app, or a piece of hardware. There are things out there that do something vaguely similar, but you think yours is better.
Go to the comments sections of various chat boards that are discussing the current way of doing things. Make note of the complaints.
Ask the people there if they will chat with you for 5-10 minutes about a product idea.
Be polite.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely this. This is also one of the reasons why there seem to be many successful business where the founder "scratched an itch" - they built a business on something they knew a lot about.
I think the "build a product to scratch your own itch" is one of the worst pieces of advice for entrepreneurs, especially first time entrepreneurs. The reason is that most entrepreneurs end up building businesses to scratch an itch, not solve a real serious problem. Source: been there, done that.
Fwiw, I've become mildly obsessed with this topic, and have written up a couple articles that may help:
* How to talk to customers: http://customerdevlabs.com/2013/11/05/how-i-interview-custom...
* Which customers should you talk to first: http://customerdevlabs.com/2017/03/20/who-are-early-adopters...
* How to ask for conversations: http://customerdevlabs.com/2014/02/18/how-to-send-cold-email...
I'm working on a consumer product. Here's what I do. - Include an invite for a quick 10-15 minute chat in the welcome email (more people than you would think actually take up the offer) - Ask them why they signed up (this is key to help you determine what problem people want you to solve) - Ask them their biggest frustrations about the solution so far And just take it from there.
How do you prioritize which 'frustrations' to work on? Processing existing customer feedback has always been a problem even at large, established places I've worked for - chasing the new customer and adding features is always sexier than a general feeling of unease that requires a lot of prying to get to the root of. Often in my experience most customers don't seem to know what the exact problem is, or can't put it i…
If you have nothing to go off of but a rough sense of which part of their day is causing them frustration, you can ask "I heard that (process X) is hard or frustrating. Can you walk me through how that works? Where does it start?" followed by very simple questions to keep them talking - they'll get as detailed as they can for someone who appears to be in a position to help.
If you have no network, the first thing to do is build a network. You can do this by building something people sign up for, getting leads, by talking to your neighbors, by talking to organizations, by giving talks or by sitting out in the park with a sign that says "Talk To Me About JavaScript", but you can't build something people are going to use without knowing the people who are going to use it and the best way t…
It depends a lot on what you are selling. If you go to a small retail business (say a cafe) when it is not the peak hour, you might find the owner working there. It is usually not hard to get them in a conversation, many of them will talk your ear off. (Sometimes this even works for a supermarket or a large chain store.) On that front, people usually like to be heard so if you do a lot of listening that takes the pre…
For me, when I was a tool for indie iOS devs - still at the idea stage, I began talking to people online on iOS dev forums - iphonedevsdk forum, and reddit.com/r/ios /r/iphone, etc - I asked my friends who I knew were devs. I live in Poland, and my target audience is mostly US, so their feedback was slightly limited, but still valuable, because I could talk to them in real life - as soon as possible I went to San Fra…
First read I was thinking- 'well, maybe that's what you were, but don't be so hard on yourself...' realized you must have omitted the word 'developing'. As a former indie iOS dev, ( ie. a tool for Apple Computer Inc. ), my honest feedback is- if I was ever making enough on the App Store to afford a $15 monthly subscription, I wouldn't need the help; for the most part indie iOS developers don't make jack so our #1 con…
Cart is ahead of the horse. Getting out of the office to talk to potential customers has NOTHING to do with selling. It has to do with learning about the sector you THINK you want to be working in. In other words, you need to accept that your foundational knowledge is largely made up of information that made its way to you by going through your filter of preconceived notions and biases. My advice to my sales team (an…
Highly recommend the Mom Test which is exactly about this. https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/...
Easily the best book on how to do non-biased interviews