New Research Project: Founders
“Tell me about your customers.”
That’s how I’ve kicked off each of two dozen interviews over the past few weeks, asking founders and business operators to share their thoughts, stories and insights on customer discovery and product development. There are plenty of bloggers and thought leaders asserting the most assured paths to success, but I decided to dig in and find out for myself how people in my network are actually going about it.
I also didn’t want to limit sample selection solely to startup founders. There are creative services firms, independent contractors and decade-old companies in the mix as well.
Going in, I had a few ideas of what to expect, but did my best to tune those thoughts out and just let the data surprise me. After the first dozen interviews I found myself rethinking most of the projects I’ve started or assisted over the past year.
The interview format was an open-ended series of questions, serving as a guide to maintain some consistency, while giving interviewees the chance to express what actually matters to them. Here’s a loose recap of the points I covered, although things did shift around from time to time, depending on the flow of the conversation:
- Tell me about your customers… who are they, what are they afraid of, what do they care about?
- Was it always that clear, who the customer is? <response> Tell me more about that…
- Did you start building (product) beforehand, or some time after?
- Tell me about how you stay connected with them.. any specific tools, apps or techniques?
- If you could take everything you’ve learned since day one and go back to the beginning to start over, what would you do differently?
- (If team > 1) Tell me about a recent conversation you’ve had with a co-founder, where there was a conflict or disagreement about some aspect of your customers.
These interviews were recorded to audio and fully transcribed, along with notes and sketches from each session. The next step is to cover my house in post-it notes and get on with the analysis phase. I’m off to a good start, but will post more as the process unfolds.
Give me a shout @larimer if you have any questions, reading suggestions or related research to check out!
