How To Talk To Users | Startup School

Summary

In this insightful talk, Gustav from Y Combinator, a former Airbnb founder, shares valuable strategies for startups on engaging with users and future customers. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining open communication with users throughout a company's lifecycle to ensure product relevance and customer satisfaction. Gustav outlines practical steps for identifying and interviewing potential users, crafting the right questions to ask, and transforming insights into a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). He also cautions against common pitfalls such as focusing on features rather than problems and provides actionable advice on validating the value of a solution and keeping users involved in the development process.

Takeaways

• 🗣️ Communication is Key: The best founders maintain dialogue with their users throughout the company's lifecycle to stay grounded and receive honest feedback.
• 🤝 Building Relationships: Founders like Brian Chesky of Airbnb build personal connections with their users to gain deep insights into their needs and feedback.
• 🔎 Finding the Right Users: It's crucial to identify and engage with the right users, including those outside of personal networks, to ensure diverse and honest perspectives.
• 📢 Outreach Methods: Utilizing platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit, Slack, or Discord, and attending in-person events are effective ways to reach potential users for feedback.
• 🤔 Understanding Problems: The focus should be on understanding users' problems rather than immediately jumping to solution discussions or introducing one's own ideas.
• 📝 Conducting Interviews: Effective user interviews involve building rapport, asking open-ended questions, and actively listening without biasing the conversation with one's own ideas.
• 🚫 Avoiding Pitfalls: Certain questions should be avoided in interviews, such as yes/no questions, feature-focused inquiries, and multiple questions at once that may confuse the respondent.
• 📊 Analyzing Feedback: After gathering user insights, it's important to organize and analyze the data to identify common problems and form hypotheses for solutions.
• 💡 Creating an MVP: Use the collected information to develop a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) that addresses the core problems identified during user interviews.
• 💼 Valuable Problems: Determining if a problem is valuable involves checking if people are willing to pay for solutions, if they are satisfied with existing solutions, and how easy it is to sell to the target audience.
• 🔄 Iterative Feedback: Keeping users involved in the development process by showing them prototypes and MVPs, and incorporating their feedback into the product development.

Q & A

What is Gustav's role at Y Combinator?

Gustav works at Y Combinator as a group partner, a position he has held since 2017.

What was Gustav's involvement with Airbnb before joining Y Combinator?

Before joining Y Combinator, Gustav was a practitioner at Airbnb and a Y Combinator founder in 2007.

What are the key points Gustav plans to cover in his talk?

Gustav plans to cover why the best founders talk to users throughout the company's lifetime, how to find and communicate with users, what questions to ask and avoid, and how to turn conclusions into an MVP.

Why do most people have a wrong idea about how new startups form?

Most people believe that ideas for new products come from spontaneous moments of inspiration, rather than through a process of engaging with and learning from users and customers.

What is the significance of the photo of Brian Chesky and Amal with Airbnb?

The photo signifies the importance of two-way conversations with real customers, as Amal was the very first guest on Airbnb and spent a weekend with Brian in San Francisco.

How did Brian Chesky's experiment of living in 50 different Airbnbs benefit Airbnb?

The experiment allowed Brian to gather honest feedback on Airbnb's product directly from 50 different hosts, which was instrumental in shaping the company.

Why is it important for founders to build personal connections with their users?

Building personal connections allows founders to receive direct and honest feedback from their users, which is crucial for understanding user needs and improving the product.

What are some common platforms YC founders use to find their early users?

Some common platforms include LinkedIn, Reddit, Slack, Discord communities, and sometimes in-person events.

What is Gustav's approach to understanding if the problem he's addressing is real?

Gustav plans to interview potential customers to learn about their problems and motivations around carbon emissions, and then use this information to understand what an MVP might look like.

How does Gustav suggest conducting interviews with potential customers?

Gustav suggests conducting interviews over video calls, phone calls, or in person, building rapport with the interviewee, not introducing one's idea until the end or not at all, and focusing on listening and asking open-ended follow-up questions.

What are some specific questions Gustav recommends asking during customer interviews?

Some recommended questions include asking how they currently perform a specific task, what the hardest part about it is, how often they perform the task, why it's important for their company, and what they currently do to solve the problem.

What are some questions Gustav advises against asking during customer interviews?

Gustav advises against asking if they would use the product, which features would make the product better, yes or no questions, how a better product would look to them, and asking two questions at the same time.

What is the danger Gustav mentions when focusing on features instead of problems during interviews?

The danger is that users generally have good problems but bad solutions, and they may not have the incentive to say no to additional features, which can lead to an overcomplicated product that doesn't address the core problems.

What steps should be taken after conducting user interviews?

After conducting interviews, one should organize the notes, bucket them into different problem areas, write down conclusions and hypotheses, create an MVP, and test it with the same users.

How can founders determine if the problem they're solving is valuable?

Founders can determine if the problem is valuable by checking if people are paying for solutions in the space, if they have existing solutions they are happy with, and by evaluating how easy it is to sell to the target audience.

What is Gustav's advice on involving users in the product development process?

Gustav suggests creating a Slack instance or WhatsApp group for customers, showing them the product as it progresses, and keeping them involved by reacting quickly to their feedback.