Customer discovery
We often see two competing mindsets while talking to entrepreneurs. On the one hand, you have those who idolize the visionary founder, who built the product, got to the market, and found that their intuitions were right. You might find them quoting Henry Ford as saying customers would have demanded a faster horse if he’d asked them. On the other hand, there are those who have outsourced their product roadmap to users.
In reality, both views are valid, and often at the same time. First, realize that most of us are neither Steve Jobs nor Henry Ford, yet we must build enduring companies. Next, even though the customer may not be able to articulate the solution, listening to them will tell you something about the nature of the problem. If Henry Ford had asked customers, they would never have asked for a car — but he would have learned they wanted to go faster. And the difference would have been his ability to sift through their feedback to guide product direction.
The process of navigating this maze is called Customer discovery. It is how you make sure the dogs will eat your dog food. It is how you check that you aren’t wasting resources on a product nobody wants.
Get out of the building
The first step is to get out of the building to test your understanding of the customers’ problem. Talking to customers is an obvious first step that gets ignored too often. At some point in the startup journey, founders may have sold themselves on their business concepts and created false confidence. Customer discovery is intended to expose the flaws in your logic, and that’s a difficult pill to swallow.
The art of questioning
If you ask customer X, “Would buy or use this product?”, Their answer would either be yes or no. But that doesn’t tell you much. We often hear things like “We spoke to x number of people, and 94% said they’d need our product”. Perfect right? But did those x number of people buy it?
It is tempting to ask leading questions that validate your preconceived notions without providing useful feedback. One day, though, we will all ‘realize’ that the emperor has no clothes.
In the same vein, you should employ both qualitative (discussions, interviews, etc.) and quantitative methods (surveys, questionnaires, etc.). You will find truth at the intersection between both of them. A deep understanding of your customer’s problems requires you to develop trust. Don’t force your proposed solution upon them. Let them lead the conversation, and you can learn what the real pain points are. Insights gained from discussions can be validated via surveys.
The result of customer discovery is that you’ll be receiving information to drive product and business model iteration. And so, it is crucial that founders, themselves, go out to talk to customers. This is a process that never ends. Great companies have developed a culture of new product innovation, and each time a new product enters development, you should dive back into learning, prototyping, and experimenting.
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