If you’re starting a business or planning on starting a business stop whatever you’re doing and go talk to customers. Well, after reading this of course…
When we first started building Krit, we were going to build an incredible online community where designers could give and receive meaningful feedback on their work. We fancied ourselves the “anti-dribbble.” We were convinced that we were going to raise the bar on online conversation.
But then we got accepted into the Tminus6 accelerator program, and were immediately challenged to go find potential customers and talk to them. And once we did we quickly started to notice a trend. We found out that most professional designers didn’t have time to post their work online. And the feedback they cared most about was the feedback coming from their clients, the people who were signing their paychecks. Shocking, right?
Discovering this early on allowed us to pivot before we had anything substantial built, saving us an incredible amount of time and money. So I say it again, shut your laptop, get off your butt and go talk to customers.
Not sure where to find potential customers? Well, the best business to start is one you’re already in. When we were starting Krit we knew that no matter what we wanted to build something to help designers and developers, because we are designers and developers. So if you’ve decided to start a business in a market you really know and understand then good news, you should already know your potential customers. Chances are they’re your friends and colleagues.
If you’re still stuck, here are some other ideas for finding people to talk to:
1. Ask your friends for contacts.
Some of the best feedback we got came from people we didn’t know. All we did was reach out to a couple of friends and ask them for introductions.
2. Leverage reddit and other online communities.
We were already avid redditors, so when we were looking for feedback online we quickly turned to reddit. Reddit is an incredible community that is vastly underrated as a research tool. For those who don’t use it, it is a site where people can post thoughts or links and discuss and vote on them. Within the larger community there are smaller sub-communities called subreddits for just about any topic you can imagine. Find one or two in your market (we used r/design and r/graphic_design) and look around. But be careful, redditors don’t like to be marketed to.
We quickly were able to find several posts where designers were venting about the things that drove them crazy. Think about that for second. We were trying to talk to designers about their problems in order to validate our business idea and here was this whole community of designers talking to each other about the things that drove them crazy and voting up the biggest problems.
3. Find the places where your customers are hanging out, and go there.
For the first several months I found every single design or tech-focused meet-up I could and I went and talked to designers there. If it was in a nearby city I hopped on a train (I was living in Scotland at the time). I found most of the events through meetup.com and eventbrite or by searching around for local designers on twitter.
What’s next?
So you’ve found some people to talk to, you’ve started to get an idea of the problems people are facing from reddit or other communities, now what? How do you get them to actually talk to you? What do you say? How do you start the conversation?
First, you need to understand something insanely important about being a startup. Your single biggest advantage as a startup is that you’re a startup.
Tweet this: Your single biggest advantage as a startup is that you’re a startup.
Think about it, you’re founding a startup. In most places, that’s unusual, and the fact that it’s unusual makes it a little bit cool. Combine that with the fact that you’re a nice, awesome person (by the way you should be a nice, awesome person) and you should have no problem getting people to talk to you.
You’re not here to sell, you’re here to learn
Once you’ve started a conversation with your target customers the next thing you need to know is whatever you do, do not pitch. You’re not here to sell them on your idea. Remember what we said earlier, you’re here to listen and learn.
Instead of pitching them on your idea, ask them questions. However be careful, asking the wrong questions can be just as harmful as pitching. It’s incredibly easy to lead people with your questions, even if you’re not trying to.
Wrong question: Would it help you if you could get more meaningful feedback from designers?
Right question: Walk me through a design project from start to finish. What are the problems that drive you crazy?
Both of the questions above are questions we actually asked. We started off pitching people about our idea, and asking them if they thought it was cool. “Oh yeah, that sounds great!” they said. Well of course it does, I just made it sound as good as I could. We got a little bit better when we stopped pitching and started asking questions. But we were still getting the wrong kind of feedback. When we asked designers if they would like to get more meaningful feedback on their work, or if they would like to build connections with other designers most said, “Of course!”
But when we stopped guiding them to our idea, and started asking them about their process and the headaches they face, we heard a very different story. No one mentioned that they needed more feedback from other designers. But we did start to hear one thing over and over again. When we asked designers what their biggest problem was, 9 times out of 10 they would laugh and say, “clients.”
So that’s how we got to where we are today. We went out and actually talked to our potential customers. We heard people tell us about all of these headaches they had in dealing with clients. But we knew that the problem couldn’t be that all clients are idiots. So we kept talking to customers, kept listening, kept asking questions and we found a whole list of issues that they were dealing with from scope creep to late payments.
We went back to the drawing board and came up with Krit as you see it today. Now we are devoted to making it easier and more enjoyable for designers and developers to work with clients. And we quickly noticed something. Whereas before people were mildly interested once we guided them to our idea, now people were getting excited. And that’s the reaction you need. Because if you’re going to ask people to give up their hard-earned cash, you need to provide them with a hell of a lot of value.
If you have any questions, ideas on how we could have done better or feedback on Krit shoot me a tweet @andrewaskins or email me at andrew@krit.it
Andrew, Co-founder of Krit
