Which customers to listen to in a startup
When you start your startup there will be a lot of incoming opinions. So how do you know who to listen to?
At the very beginning, your are determining if the first solution you made has a market willing to take it as it is (even though your V1 is very rough).
You are looking for innovators / early adopters for your product. You might come across early or late majority users (mainstream), but their feedback is going to be obvious: it’s not good enough yet, or come back when it has a few more features.
The type of feedback you get tells you which type of user they are. You need to find people who have the exact problem you have a solution to, people who are willing to pay on the spot to solve this problem.
These customers will become evangelists for your product, which will help you gain traction, so listen to them and evolve your product around them.
Generally you can segment users into one of three buckets:
- Love your current product
- On the fence about your product
- Don’t get your product
You need to split your time between keeping the first segment happy, and getting people from the second segment into the first.
