For those who know Eric Ries, startup evangelist and founder of the Lean start-up movement, you may have watched this video in which he describes the concept of ‘stopping wasting people’s time — and yours” which in essence explains how skipping validation processes generates a huge quantity of wasted time for products that may not interest targeted users.

If you are getting direct feedback (which you must!) on Skype for instance, I’d say that one third of the discussion should be about your product (pitch), the second third should be about you wanting to know about your user (casual) and the other third should be about your user providing feedback on your product (insights).

One thing that I found particularly useful is to write a script for your pitch. Here are the 3 main blocks I think you need to write down before getting on a chat or call with your potential users:

1. Start by explaining why are you spending time doing 1-1 sessions with all your potential users

The idea here is to demonstrate that you are creating something for people, not yourself and to let the user know that you are in an open mindset and have some doubts about your product. What this will do is to make your user feel useful and less worry to say obvious things.

2. Describe what is your product and tell a story

The story leading to your product is I believe as important as the product specs itself. Explain how your personal experience led you to your idea, share the problem you initially faced and share some form of eureka moment. Try to have a storytelling approach and this will make your product more personal and help your user to identify with it and yourself. For Dish Out, we created this slideshare presentation which we always tried to send before talking to users for the first time. On a separate note, Slideshare is a great underrated platform to market your start-up and you may want to dedicate more time there than in Facebook for instance. I’ll talk about that in another post.

3. Clearly state what your interlocutor could do with your product

This is probably the key part of the discussion. First of all, if you are unable to answer this question, you may want to rethink your idea. It is also very crucial to differentiate this question to “What features do you have in your product”. Often, entrepreneurs including myself make the mistake of thinking that features define your product where this is what users can do with it that does it. Try to be succinct and follow a bullet point format: With my product, you will be able to 1.xxx 2xxx. 3xxx.

The next section of the discussion should be about your user and should be a very casual discussion. You may or may not need to write a script for this section otherwise you’re going to sound a bit unnatural. Whilst you should let the flow of the discussion go, here are questions that you should ask discretely:

• Tell me more about you… what is your daily job?
• In which aspect of your life do you think this product may be relevant? Why?
• Do you have experience using a similar product? If yes, what features do you like the most?
• Do you have friends in mind that may be potentially interested in our product too?
• By the way, how did your heard about our product?

The final section of the discussion is about taking feedback. Everything you’ve said so far is actually leading to this section. Your thoughts for pivoting will be nurtured by what users will tell you about your product here. I think the most important part is to switch perspective and really put yourself in the guy’ shoes. Here’s how and why:

1. Take feedback to improve your pitch for the next chat

This is a very inspiring exercise. To kick-off the feedback section of the discussion, I would usually ask the user if he thinks the product concept and description is clear and easy to understand.

If you’re talking to someone a bit creative, don’t hesitate to ask him or her to summarize your product in one sentence or to invent a tagline on the go. You’ll be very surprised to see their different perspective on your product and this is great!

2. Capture your differentiating highlights

The idea of pivoting is a cool objective but you shouldn’t lose the vision you initially had for your product. This vision and the passion you are showing for it is I believe what brought you where you are today. The scientific view of your product and feedback is a key realization but hunt also for the uplifting and emotional feedback:

• There’s different similar product in the market. What made you think we were doing things differently?
• What do you think is cool and unique about our product?
• Which feature do you think is the more exciting?
• Think of one scenario where you think our product could have saved your day?

3. Challenge, shake and nod your hypothesis

The hurtful part. One important thing I should have mentioned earlier is the need to have a set of hypothesis that you need to validate. I’ll try to write something about that later, but basically you need 5-6 statements like this:

- People will use my product because they need….

- People will use my product because they are….

- People will use my product because their life is ….

- ….. are the type of personas that will use my product

- ….. are the traits of characters of people that will use my product

- ….. are the main barriers why people won’t use my product

Therefore, if you think feedback from the angle of validating hypothesis, you are not actually looking for negativity or criticism.

You are looking for inaccuracy in your approach of the problem and subsequent gaps in your product positioning.

Let me give you what happened with Dish Out.

Initially, we had thought Dish Out as a task-sharing application for couples, with some gamification elements. Our approach of the problem was about managing tasks, getting your partner to do more at home and proving you are an expert in x or y category. Our hypothesis by that time where:

• Couples would be happier if they could get their partner to do more things
• Unbalance from a task perspective in a relationship is not ok
• Guys and girls have their specialties, but it would be better if everyone shared the same tasks
• The competition factor can drive a relationship

After taking people’s feedback through surveys and 1-1 discussions, we realized that our hypothesis were not 100% correct, so we changed them:

• Each couple is unique, don’t try to make them fit in one mold
• Unbalance from a task perspective in a relationship is ok
• Expertise in tasks is what makes couples happier
• Couple want to improve individually in their relationship

These new realizations that were validated by potential users made us rethink Dish Out from a total different angle even though this is still the same idea and problem we had identified.

As a result, we managed to pivot and Dish Out today looks like this:

“Dish Out allows couples to accomplish useful and meaningful things together, individually and reciprocally”