71–80 of 121 posts
And even if they do answer you, it's a bad idea to commit to those answers. There's a book written specifically about this (The Mom Test), but the point is: asking people about their problems is not a good way to validate a startup idea.
"hey, talk to me in an open ended fashion about how you do _____ in your business and I'll summarize the responses, show you how you compare and share all of the solutions I know about that can help you"
I found the 20 people I needed to talk to. I found out where they worked. I called the public number. I asked to talk to them. I explained I was thinking about starting a startup and I needed some help thinking through some ideas. 2 of them told me they couldn't give me the time. 15 gave me a longer than 1 hour call at a later date, 3 of them let me fly out to them and spend a day with them. Took me about 5/6 months.
How did it work out? Did you get useful information and start a successful business? Of so is the business still doing what you thought it would be doing after you’d done those interviews?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's something I used to do internally at my previous employer, and I know it's very useful. In this case I would have to convince a doc to let me follow them around and that's an immense ask. It's also going to miss systemic, intangible issues that are not task related. It's a great thing to do for an already-established product.
You must have a doctor somewhere in your network 1 degree of separation away. Get a friend to ask for a favor to invite the doctor to a meal at a nice place, your treat. Be up front about your intent. At the right time, pitch to the doctor the idea of interacting on the job with doctor and/or staff. And don't promise the doctor any equity. Maybe free access to the product.
You have to find a way to network.
Look at how pharma reps do it. Attractive people, coming into the office and bring lunch.
Where can you put yourself in a spot to meet and talk to a high percentage of doctors. My first thought is a golf course. Is there a way in that way?
Do you volunteer at a hospital on weekends?
Another tip is for anyone you talk to, ask for introductions. Who else has this problem?? I work in healthcare (not a doctor). Not sure if I can help, but happy to chat if you dm me.
My advice to you is to enter this area only if you or someone involved is capable of getting very deep into the kind of medicine you're writing software for. I don't just mean "they commonly do procedures X and Y and tests A and B a lot".
The reputation of people in medicine not liking tech is wrong. We just don't like using bad tech, which is most of it.
It would help if you gave more targeted thoughts on what specifically you're looking to develop.
I'm partially talking to the person to help them out, partially to help out the introer who I already know, and partially because who knows maybe this person will actually be good to know.
Can you get intros from others? One way to do this is when a random cold outreach does agree to be interviewed by you, at the end of your call you can say, "Is there anyone else in your industry that you can introduce me to/that I should talk to?"
Even better if you've looked at their linkedin connections and can say, "Hey I noticed you are connected with X and Y. Do you know them well enough to introduce me? I'd love to have a similar conversation with them."
If they say yes then send them a pre-written intro to make it as low lift as possible for them. "Hey x, I asked y if they could introduce us. I'm looking to learn about painpoints for yada yada..."
I've used that strategy in the past and branching like that tends to have a much higher success rate than random cold outreach.
Doctors are particularly difficult group to get a hold of cold for somewhat obvious reasons (overworked, value privacy, etc).
The most effective approach I've seen is to focus on a niche type of medicine/field and attend one of the smaller conferences. Especially if you can find one that's less academic and more industry-oriented.
That's where you'll find the doctors who actively are interested in startups and getting into new things.
Sometimes these conferences will also have built-in networking functions to help facilitate.
https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/...