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P.S. I read @rwalling's "Start Small, Stay Small" a few months back, and it was a phenomenal read. Highly recommend.
"The gist is that it’s tough to get unbiased feedback during customer validation." - I wish this was taught along with lean startup content. Too many times I have heard founders say they validated the idea when all they have done is gotten biased feedback while asking self-fulfilling questions.
The ideal way to validate it is to be so immerse in the industry/problem such that you understand most of the pain points. Do the job that your ideal customer is doing. Attend the conferences they're going to. Visit the forums they're visiting. Read the websites they're visiting. Analyze the reviews they're posting in TrustRadius/G2Crowd. Look at their Linkedin profiles to see what their day to day involves.
I learned almost precisely the same lesson in the same way over the same amount of time (a year) a few years back.
It was _incredibly_ helpful to have those insights going into my next startup, and I approached customer development entirely differently.
Lessons learned can be quickly applied!
Before a Slack-using company would switch, the competitor would need to support many/most/all of the integrations that the company is using. You've really only got two chances to win Slack's customers: the point before they seriously adopt Slack, and the point in the future where Slack does something stupid like jack prices way up or suffer a serious breach.
I've never been more annoyed by a basic website. Center your content!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, iterate on the product until it sells like hotcakes that's your validation. Then you'll spend the rest of your days trying to STOP the torrent of complaints, feature requests, etc. Better yet have actual experience in the industry that the product is targeting rather then expecting that industry to go out of its way to tell you what to build. Ideally you have orders for the product before you start building i…
> hotcakes that's your validation Exactly. The best validation is people paying for a product.
"The gist is that it’s tough to get unbiased feedback during customer validation." - I wish this was taught along with lean startup content. Too many times I have heard founders say they validated the idea when all they have done is gotten biased feedback while asking self-fulfilling questions.
After doing 10-20 of those interviews, I got pretty good at coming up with an internal "pain scale" - where this particular problem sits in terms of overall pain the customer is experiencing, and thus how much they are willing to commit to solving the problem.
Is "a year" supposed to add a lot of impact here?? I frequently spend multiple years on more dubious endeavors, and have zero regrets about it. That's life. Edit: Okay this came out pretty harshly, but what I am poorly trying to express is that most people spend more time on worse things, so "a year" doesn't parse as the intended intensifier for me.
There's no need to be so judgemental of a well written article describing someone else's experience, even if it isn't as grand and wonderful as yours.
Great post, Derrick! I learned almost precisely the same lesson in the same way over the same amount of time (a year) a few years back. It was _incredibly_ helpful to have those insights going into my next startup, and I approached customer development entirely differently. Lessons learned can be quickly applied!
"In hindsight, I took on an unreasonably audacious endeavor with Level in part because of my internal “this might get big if I play my cards right” dialogue. It would have been far better to either deliberately go for the big idea (and probably seek venture funding to make it happen), or start far smaller and build my way into a sustainable company of one."
I appreciate this passage... a thoughtful reflection.
"The gist is that it’s tough to get unbiased feedback during customer validation." - I wish this was taught along with lean startup content. Too many times I have heard founders say they validated the idea when all they have done is gotten biased feedback while asking self-fulfilling questions.
Read “The Mum Test”[1]. It will make you aware that you to get unbiased feedback you need to remove your identity from the idea so that people aren’t nice to protect you.