Customer Discovery 201: Lesson Three
Reasons Customer Discovery Goes Sideways
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a startup advisor say founders “just don’t want to do customer discovery.” Not only is this not true, but my research suggests that advisors don’t actually believe that sentiment. So why do they say this? Perhaps there is so much frustration with customer discovery because there are many slippery ways to torpedo it.
Cultural Phenomena Impact the Perception, and Possibly Performance, of Customer Discovery
“Fail Fast” is a well-known methodology in innovation culture popularized by Eric Ries in The Lean Startup. While the desire to avoid wasting time on ideas that don’t work is valid, one cannot do all things “fast” with a successful outcome.
What is lost when customer discovery is not given its proper energy? Josh Botkin, advisor to Histosonics and Entrepreneur-in-Residence and faculty at the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, explains:
At best wasted time and effort. Even worse is false confirmation of an assumption, false confidence that one knows more or has better insights than one does. People move forward with plans and build on a shaky foundation, rather than making sure that everything is solid and structurally intact.
Not only is the founder increasing their overall risk for the solution’s effectiveness and the success of a business, but they are also exposing themselves to potentially significant opportunity costs in comparison to the effort that would have been spent on discovery.
Some believe it’s not only startup culture that is to blame but a systemic issue of K-12 education systems (in the United States) as a source of a collective urge to jump to solutions before thoroughly studying a problem.
Rashmi Menon, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies and Entrepreneurial Studies faculty at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business, observes:
What [U.S. K-12 schools] teach is to state what you believe and then provide points to back that up — we don’t teach people to go into a project or a paper without a belief or opinion. Discovery is the opposite — you’re not supposed to advocate for anything!
Founders Experience Many Types of Customer Discovery Process Challenges
During my interviews, founders, investors, and advisors reported a number of friction points that led to defective customer discovery. These fall into four primary categories: problems of Motivation, Rigor, Culture, and Psychology.
Common Customer Discovery Friction Points
- Motivation
Ideally, founders perform customer discovery because they want to thoroughly understand their customers’ needs, motivations, emotions, and environmental pressures. However, some founders engage in customer discovery to satisfy an actual or perceived requirement (e.g., completing 30 interviews to receive a completion certificate). Founders may or may not be motivated to dig deeper into the nuances of a problem.
Common Motivation friction points include:
- Satisfaction with superficial evidence
- Asking for opinions rather than facts
- Talking to the wrong people
- Listening to media or investors first
- Choosing to do surveys rather than interviews
- Declining to expand their pool of knowledge
- Resisting new methods of data collection
2. Rigor
Lack of rigor takes on many forms and may not be at all intentional on the part of the founder. It is easier to execute a quality interview with comprehensive training, and while the founder may have sought training, the quality of it can vary.
Performing quality customer discovery has a high barrier to entry that you must have the self-awareness to recognize. According to Christina York, founder of Spellbound, a therapeutic tool that uses immersive augmented reality technology to help children cope and engage with medical treatment:
Everybody who is social or good with people thinks they’re good at interviews, and they’re not. We all have our own biases that influence how people interact with us. You have to assume you’re going to screw something up, especially at the beginning of your career. Experience makes you better.
Common Rigor friction points:
- Not establishing identifiable research criteria or milestones
- Interviewing for opinions rather than facts
- Starting discovery too late
- Neglecting analysis and synthesis of data
- Conflating surveys with interviews
3. Culture
As noted above, startup culture may impede the customer discovery process, but the values of the other communities in which founders operate can also negatively impact discovery. Media, team (internal) dynamics, and investor norms were all noted as areas of friction.
Common Culture friction points:
- Prioritizing media or investors over customers
- Failing to obtain team buy-in
- Misinterpreting the “fail-fast” ethos
4. Psychology (Self)
Internal conflict can play a role in a founder’s investment in customer discovery, especially issues of confidence (over- or under-confident).
Common Psychology friction points:
- Avoiding embarrassment, distress, provocative conversations, or rejection
- Seeking immediate gratification
- Employing performative empathy without genuine humility in the process
With so much working against founders’ pursuit of discovery, it’s no wonder many achieve ineffective results. The good news is that both founders and their advisors are eager for opportunities to improve customer discovery efforts. In Lesson Four, I’ll review a potential path forward: A Framework for Tracking and Reporting Customer Discovery Decision Activities.
