Eric Migicovsky - How to Talk to Users

Summary

Eric Richard Kazuki, a YC partner and founder of Pebble, emphasizes the importance of maintaining direct user connections in startups. He advises founders to personally engage with users to gather valuable feedback and improve their products. Kazuki highlights key strategies for effective user interviews, including avoiding pitches, focusing on users' real experiences, and asking insightful questions. He outlines the significance of user interactions at different stages of a startup's journey and provides practical tips for extracting useful information. The talk underscores the critical role of user feedback in achieving product-market fit and overall startup success.

Takeaways

• 🗣️ Maintaining a direct connection with users is crucial for founders throughout the company's lifespan to extract valuable information.
• 🚫 Avoid outsourcing user engagement to other team members; founders should be actively involved in talking to customers.
• 🎬 The movie 'Office Space' illustrates the mistake of having a go-between for engineers and users, emphasizing the importance of direct communication.
• 📚 The book 'The Mom Test' highlights common errors in user interviews, such as focusing on pitching ideas instead of extracting information.
• 🤔 Ask open-ended questions during user interviews to understand the specifics of the user's experiences and pain points.
• 🙅‍♂️ Avoid hypothetical questions in user interviews; focus on the user's past experiences and concrete details.
• 👂 Listen more and talk less during user interviews to gather as much information as possible.
• ❓ Key questions to ask in early customer interviews include understanding the hardest part of the problem, the last time the problem was encountered, and why it was hard.
• 🔄 Use customer feedback to iterate towards product-market fit, ensuring that the product is something people actively want and use.
• 📈 Utilize quantitative measures, like the percentage of users who would be 'very disappointed' without the product, to gauge product-market fit.
• 🚀 User interviews are beneficial at all stages of a company's growth, from the idea phase to achieving and maintaining product-market fit.

Q & A

Why is maintaining a direct connection to users critical for founders?

Maintaining a direct connection to users is critical for founders because it allows them to extract valuable information at all different stages of running their company, which is essential for product improvement, marketing, and positioning.

What is the common misconception about talking to users in a company?

The common misconception is that roles like CEO or CTO can outsource user engagement to other people in the company, such as salespeople or heads of product. However, the best companies are those where founders themselves maintain a direct connection to their users.

What are the two core activities that YC teachings emphasize as essential for a startup's success?

The two core activities emphasized by YC teachings are coding or building the product, and talking to users.

What is the primary goal of a user interview?

The primary goal of a user interview is to extract information from the interviewee that will help improve the product, marketing, or positioning, rather than to sell them on using the product.

Why should engineers or developers not be the go-between for users and the company?

Engineers or developers should not be the go-between because it's important for the founders and core members of the company to develop the skills for talking to users directly, ensuring a deeper understanding and connection to their needs and experiences.

What are some of the common mistakes made during user interviews?

Common mistakes include talking about the idea or product too much, discussing hypotheticals instead of specifics, and talking too much instead of listening and extracting information.

What are the five great questions suggested for early customer interviews?

The five great questions are: 1) What is the hardest part about doing the thing you're trying to solve? 2) Tell me about the last time you encountered this problem. 3) Why was this hard? 4) What if anything have you done to try to solve this problem? 5) What don't you love about the solutions you've already tried?

Why is it important to ask about the last time a user encountered a problem?

Asking about the last time a user encountered a problem helps extract context and real-life examples of past problems that potential users have had, allowing you to understand whether your solution would have helped in that specific circumstance.

What is the significance of understanding why a past problem was hard for a user?

Understanding why a past problem was hard helps identify the exact problem you may begin to solve and also informs your marketing or sales copy, as it provides insights into the value or benefits of your solution.

Why should startups focus on problems that people face regularly or that are painful enough to warrant solving?

Startups should focus on such problems because they are more likely to be perceived as valuable by users, who actively want to solve them in their lives, increasing the likelihood of product adoption and success.

What are the three critical phases of an early-stage company where talking to users is extremely beneficial?

The three critical phases are: the idea stage before any product development, the prototype stage before getting the product in the hands of paying customers, and the stage after launching when iterating towards product-market fit.

What is a simple yet effective strategy for finding the first users for a startup?

One effective strategy is to start with oneself, then talk to friends and co-workers, and get warm introductions. Another approach is to show up in person at relevant industry events or directly to potential customers' places of business.

How can startups identify their best first customers during user interviews?

Startups can identify their best first customers by asking questions that provide numerical answers about the cost of the problem, the frequency of encountering the problem, and the budget for solving the problem.

What is a practical tip for conducting user interviews effectively?

A practical tip is to take detailed notes, keep the conversation casual, respect the other person's time, and start with a small number of interviews to refine the process.

How can startups use customer feedback to guide their journey towards product-market fit?

Startups can use customer feedback by asking critical questions like how customers would feel if they could no longer use the product, and using the responses to make data-driven decisions about feature development and iteration.

What is a simple hack to gather more direct contact information from users?

A simple hack is to ask for the user's phone number during signup, which can be used for direct communication and gaining a deeper understanding of specific issues or feedback.

Why is it important to discard certain types of data collected during user interviews?

It's important to discard bad data like compliments and hypotheticals because they are not specific and do not provide actionable information for improving the product or understanding user needs.

Outlines

00:00

👋 Introduction and Importance of Talking to Users

Eric Richard, a partner at YC and founder of Pebble, emphasizes the importance of founders maintaining a direct connection with users. He explains that this connection is crucial for extracting valuable information throughout a company's lifecycle. Outsourcing user interaction is discouraged; instead, founders, including technical leads, should engage directly with users to ensure they understand and address user needs effectively. This foundational practice is critical for building successful products and companies.

05:02

📚 The Mom Test and Common Mistakes in User Interviews

Eric discusses 'The Mom Test,' a book by a YC founder, which outlines common mistakes in user interviews. He highlights three major errors: pitching ideas during interviews, discussing hypotheticals, and failing to learn about the user's life and context. Effective user interviews should focus on understanding specific problems and experiences rather than selling the product or discussing potential features.

10:03

🗣️ Extracting Specifics and Context from User Interviews

Eric emphasizes the need to extract specific information about the user's past experiences and the context of their problems. He provides examples, such as asking about the last time the user encountered a problem and why it was challenging. This approach helps in understanding the user's real-life challenges and informs better product development and marketing strategies.

15:05

👥 Finding First Users and Conducting Effective User Interviews

Eric offers practical advice for finding first users and conducting effective user interviews. He suggests starting with friends, co-workers, and warm introductions. He also recommends in-person visits to potential user locations and attending industry events to gather insights. Key tips include taking detailed notes, keeping interviews casual, and respecting the interviewee's time.

20:06

💡 Identifying the Best First Customers

Eric outlines a framework for identifying the best first customers by asking questions that yield numerical answers. These questions focus on the cost of the problem, its frequency, and the customer's budget for solving it. He provides an example involving a new smoothie blender, comparing potential customers based on these criteria to prioritize the best opportunities.

25:06

📈 Iterating Towards Product Market Fit

Eric discusses the importance of user feedback in iterating towards product-market fit. He mentions Paul Graham's and Marc Andreessen's definitions of product-market fit and how the CEO of Superhuman developed a quantitative system to track it. By regularly asking users how disappointed they would be if they could no longer use the product, companies can gauge their progress towards achieving product-market fit.

30:09

🔍 Conducting User Interviews to Improve Product Development

Eric concludes with additional tips for conducting user interviews. He advises founders to ask users for contact information, avoid designing by committee, and discard bad data such as compliments and hypotheticals. The goal is to gather specific, actionable insights that can directly inform product improvements and ensure the development of features that truly add value.

Keywords

💡User Interviews

User interviews are a critical component of the product development process, where founders engage directly with potential users to gather insights and feedback. In the video, Eric emphasizes the importance of maintaining a direct connection to users throughout the company's lifecycle to extract valuable information. He provides tactical advice on conducting user interviews, highlighting the need to avoid pitching the product and instead focus on understanding the user's life, motivations, and specific experiences related to the problem the product aims to solve.

💡Product Market Fit

Product market fit refers to the alignment between a product and what the target market wants or needs. The video discusses how vague definitions of product market fit can be unhelpful for guiding product development. Instead, Eric introduces a quantitative approach to measure product market fit by asking users how they would feel if they could no longer use the product, with the benchmark of 40% of users expressing 'very disappointed' indicating a strong product market fit. This concept is central to the iterative process of improving a product to meet user needs.

💡Direct Connection

A direct connection, as mentioned in the video, is the ongoing relationship and communication between the founders of a company and its users. Eric stresses that the best founders maintain this connection to understand their users deeply and gather insights that can inform product development and company strategy. The direct connection is essential for extracting 'hard data' and 'real facts' about users' lives, which can guide decision-making and innovation within the company.

💡Founder Responsibilities

The video highlights that it is the responsibility of the founders, regardless of their specific role within the company, to engage with users and understand their needs. Eric dispels the notion that CEOs or CTOs can outsource this responsibility, asserting that it is a core duty that cannot be delegated. This concept underscores the importance of founders being actively involved in customer interactions to maintain a pulse on the market and user sentiment.

💡The Mom Test

The Mom Test is a book title mentioned in the video, which symbolizes the common mistake of discussing one's startup idea with loved ones who may not provide objective feedback. Eric uses this term to illustrate the pitfalls of extracting information from people who are biased towards supporting us, rather than conducting proper user interviews with unbiased potential users to gather useful data about the product's viability and areas for improvement.

💡Hypotheticals

In the context of user interviews, hypotheticals refer to questions or discussions about what a product could be or what features it might have in the future. Eric warns against using hypotheticals during interviews, as they can lead to vague and unhelpful responses. Instead, he advises focusing on specifics and past experiences that can provide concrete data to inform product decisions.

💡Feature Set

The feature set of a product encompasses all the functionalities and attributes it offers. In the video, Eric discusses the importance of understanding which features are essential to solving the user's problems by asking what they dislike about existing solutions. This approach helps in defining the product's feature set and ensures that new additions are based on user needs rather than assumptions.

💡Prototype Stage

The prototype stage is a phase in product development where a preliminary version of the product is created and tested with users. Eric mentions this stage as a critical time for talking to users to refine the product and understand who the best first customers will be. It's a period where user feedback is invaluable for making adjustments before the product is fully launched.

💡Iterating Towards Product Market Fit

Iterating towards product market fit involves making ongoing improvements to a product based on user feedback and data to achieve the optimal alignment with user needs. Eric discusses the importance of this iterative process, using the example of the CEO of Superhuman who implemented a system to quantitatively measure user satisfaction and guide the product towards product market fit.

💡First Customers

Identifying the right first customers is crucial for startups, as these early adopters can provide critical feedback and validation for the product. In the video, Eric talks about using customer interviews to determine the best first customers by assessing factors such as the cost of the problem, frequency of the problem, and the customer's budget to solve it. This information helps in prioritizing which customers to target initially.

Highlights

Founders must maintain a direct connection with users to extract information critical at all stages of running a company.

CEOs and CTOs should not outsource user research; it is essential for founders to develop skills to talk directly to users.

The goal of user interviews is to extract information to improve the product, not to pitch or sell the product.

Avoid discussing hypotheticals during user interviews; focus on specific past experiences and problems.

Learn about users' lives and broader contexts to understand their motivations and the paths that led them to encounter the problem.

During user interviews, founders should listen more and talk less to gather valuable insights and data.

Five key questions to ask during customer interviews include: the hardest part about the task, the last time they encountered the problem, why it was hard, what they have done to solve it, and what they don't like about current solutions.

Startups should target problems that users face regularly and find painful enough to seek solutions.

In early stages, begin by interviewing yourself, friends, and coworkers; it doesn't take a large number of interviews to gather valuable insights.

Industry events and guerrilla-style meetings can be effective ways to gather user feedback without a marketing budget.

For prototype testing, identify first customers by assessing how much the problem costs them, how frequently they encounter it, and their budget for solving it.

Create a simple spreadsheet to prioritize potential customers based on their responses to critical questions.

Iterate towards product-market fit by regularly asking users how disappointed they would be if they could no longer use the product.

Collect contact information during user sign-up to facilitate direct communication for troubleshooting and feedback.

Avoid designing by committee; validate feature demand by asking users to commit financially before developing new features.

Discard compliments and hypotheticals as they provide less actionable data compared to specific feedback on past experiences.

Conduct unbiased and detailed customer interviews instead of pitching ideas to ensure genuine feedback.

Recording interviews can help capture detailed notes and insights for future reference.

Transcripts

hi everyone my name is Eric Richard

Kazuki I'm a partner here at YC I

actually started a company that went

through Y Combinator back in 2011 I

started a company called pebble we made

one of the first smartwatches I am

really excited to be here to talk about

talking to users because this is one of

the perennial things that that you

always hear about as one of the critical

factors in starting a company the best

founders maintain a direct connection to

their users throughout the lifespan of

their entire company they maintain a

direct connection because they need to

extract information from from their

users at all different stages of running

their company often times people think

that you know they're the CEO or they're

the CTO they're the technical kind of

product leads of the company they can

outsource this this that they can

outsource this research to other people

in their company they can hire

salespeople they can hire heads of

product but at the core the best

companies are the ones where the

founders themselves maintain a direct

connection to their users if you are the

CEO it is your job it is in your job

description to talk to customers so take

the time to learn how to do it well all

founders need to need to participate in

this process as well don't if you're the

engineer if you're the developer don't

think that you can escape this process

just because you're the person who's

coding there's a pretty classic scene

from the movie office space where they

there's an individual who says I'm the

person who who is the go-between between

engineers and users I know how to talk

to people I have people skills and that

is one of the things that you do not

want to have happen at your company you

want to make sure that the founders and

the the the core the core members of

your company are the ones who develop

the skills for talking to users so you

do not have to hire someone like that to

be the go-between talking to users is so

critical that at the core of kind of ycs

teachings there are only two things that

you must do in order to search your

company you need to code or

build your product and talk to users so

this is easier said than done I want to

provide today some tactical advice on

how to plan your strategy for talking to

users as well as some some questions and

strategies that you can use to conduct

your own user interviews at the

beginning of your of your company a lot

of the advice that I that I'll present

today is actually synthesized

fantastically in this book actually

written by a YC founder called the mom

test the name of the book comes after

kind of the the process in which we

probably all go through where we want to

tell our parents about the company that

we're working on and we I think that by

talking to people that you know love us

and want to support us

we're actually extracting good or useful

information about how to how we could

adjust or improve our company but at its

core this is not the best way to get

information so the mom test as Rob

actually explains it's three common

errors that we make when we try to

preach I to conduct user interviews the

first problem the first mistake that we

pretty much all make is we talk about

our idea we're founders we love to pitch

our idea we love to talk about the the

product that we're working on but during

a user interview that is not the time to

be pitching the product the goal of a

great user interview is to extract

information from the person that you're

talking to to extract data that will

help you improve the product or improve

your marketing or improve your

positioning it is not to sell them on

using your product so at the core of a

great injury user interview you need to

learn about their life you need to talk

about specifics around the problem area

that you're trying to solve that the

user may be going through second mistake

that we pretty much all make is we talk

about hypotheticals we talk about what

our product could be we talk about

features that we want to build we ask

questions like we ask questions like if

we built this feature would you be

interested in using it

would you be interested in paying for it

that is wrong instead talk about

specifics that have already occurred in

the users life this will give you

stronger and better information in which

to make product and company changing

decisions you also want to talk in

general about the users life you don't

want to just talk about the specific

problem or sorry the the specific

solution that you're presenting try to

extract information about the users the

path that led them to encounter that

problem ask them questions about their

life in kind of more broader and more

broader ways to extract context around

how they arrived at this at this problem

learn about their motivations learn

about why they got themselves into that

problem in the first place and the third

trap that we pretty much all fall into

is that we talk we talk a lot or

founders we're always pitching investors

were pitching employees we're trying to

hire people we're trying to partner so

we tend to spend a lot of our time

talking in a user interview try to try

to restrain your your your interest in

talking and really listen take notes and

listen to what the user is saying

because in that span of time that 10 20

30 minutes that you spend with the user

you're trying to extract as much

information as possible so that when you

return to the office and when you return

to your co-founders you're bringing hard

data real facts about users lives to the

table I think that there are five great

questions that everyone can ask during

their their early customer interviews

the first question is what is the

hardest part about doing the thing that

you're trying to solve

let's take Dropbox for an example now

many of you may not remember our world

before Dropbox but put yourself back in

the position of Drew the founder of

Dropbox in 2005 when he was initially

working on kind of the the initial idea

of Dropbox while working while studying

at MIT imagine you're in the computer

lab at MIT and you're sitting next to

your friend you turn and you ask you're

working on this project to create

Dropbox and you

you want to learn more about how other

people are sharing files so that you can

learn you know are these other potential

users here or what are the problems that

I can help solve with this new

technology so you turn to your friend

and you ask what is the hardest part

about working on a group project with

school computers you're sending in the

computer lab it's the perfect context

for asking that kind of question and you

begin open-ended conversation trying to

extract information about how that

person currently works on group projects

together with friends hopefully you'll

learn about specific pain points that

they have like they log on to a shared

computer they have to get their files

from somewhere they may have a network

drive attached to the the university

system but they're working with someone

who may not be logged on to a university

computer at that time maybe you learn

about problems with synchronizing of

shared work maybe you're both working on

the exact same document at the exact

same time how do you begin how do you

currently attempt to solve that problem

in general the best startups are looking

for problems that people face on a

regular basis or that they're painful

enough to warrant solving this question

can help confirm or or confirm for you

whether the problem that you're actually

working the the problem that you're

working on is actually one that real

users feel is a pain feel as something

that they actively want to solve in

their life the second question to the

point that I was making earlier about

trying to get to specifics rather than

hypotheticals is to ask the question

tell me about the last time that you

encountered this problem the goal of

this question is actually to extract

context around the circumstances in

which the user encountered that problem

so for example in the Dropbox case you

may be talking to your friend and learn

about a week ago a specific time frame

who were they working with which which

which which class were they working

working on which was this it was it's a

computer science problem was this a an

English paper try to extract as much

information as you

and about the the context in which they

began solving this problem so that as

you develop as you develop your product

you'll be able to actually reference

real-life examples of past problems that

potential users have had and you can

overlay your solution on top of that to

see if it would have helped in that

particular circumstance the third

question is why was this hard

why was the circumstance in which that

student was trying to work on their

their shared project their their project

with other folks why was that hard what

were these specific things that they

encountered that were difficult the

reason why you want to ask this question

is because you'll hear many different

things from different people going back

to the Dropbox example you might

encounter some people who say that maybe

the problem may be the number one

problem that they were encountering was

when they emailed files back and forth

they ended up duplicating work because

they didn't have the exact same kind of

document at the exact same time maybe

other people will say that they

submitted the wrong document in the end

to the to the professor for their group

project because they had like crazy

strings of file version numbers on the

end so the benefit from asking this

question is not just to identify the

exact problem that you may begin to

solve with your solution to this problem

but you'll also begin to understand how

you market your product how you explain

to new potential users the value or the

benefits of of your solution in general

customers don't buy what they don't buy

the what they buy the why so in the

Dropbox example they may not be they may

not be excited and overjoyed at saying

oh I now have this kind of file syncing

tool that can that can keep all my files

in sync but they'll by the Y they'll say

well this exact product this product

will help with this exact problem that I

had just two weeks ago when I was trying

to work on a student project with some

of my friends so answers that you get

from customers to this question of why

why was this past problem that you

encountered so hard

may actually inform your marketing or

your sales copy as you as you build out

the rest of your product fourth question

is what if anything have you done to try

to solve this problem one of the biggest

things that that I've encountered well

while helping YC companies over the last

few years is that if customers if

potential customers are not already

exploring potential solutions to their

problem it's possible that the problem

that you're trying to solve is not a

burning enough problem for customers for

them to be even interested in your

better solution to this product so this

question tries to get at the root of

that of that of that issue is the person

who encounters this problem already

trying to solve this so in the Dropbox

example you're working on a group

project or you're talking to someone

who's who's worked on group projects in

the past try to figure out what what

tools did they experiment with what

tools did they try to use to solve this

in the past maybe they they solve this

by getting all the individuals together

in one room to work on the project with

four computers so that they could talk

in real-time to to each other as they

were working on the project maybe they

maybe they experimented with email maybe

they tried setting up as one of the top

comments on Hacker News posted during

the original Dropbox launch maybe they

had set up our sink and they would

already solve this problem with SFTP or

something like that again you want to

ask this question for two reasons one is

to figure out whether the problem that

you're solving or you're working to

solve is even really something that

people are already looking for solutions

to you and the second one is what are

the other competition out there

what will your product be compared

against as you as you as you end up

rolling out your solution and offering

it to end customers the fifth question

is very tactical so what don't you love

about the solutions that you've already

tried this is the beginning of your

potential feature set this is how you

ask the or this is how you begin

understanding

what the features are that you'll build

out for your better solution to the

problem now note that this is not the

question of what features would you want

out of a new file syncing product in the

Dropbox example because that's a

hypothetical question users in general

are not great at identifying the the

next features that they want in the

product just like the old you know Henry

Ford quote you know our when we were

developing the automobile or our users

would have wanted a faster horse rather

than that car so this question

specifically targets what are the what

are the what are the problems with the

existing solutions that they've already

tried these are these are specifics and

you can begin to kind of figure out what

the diff the differential between your

new solution and the existing solutions

already in the market will be talking to

users as I said before is useful I

pretty much all stages of your company

but there's three critical phases to an

early-stage company I would kind of

define that as a company that has not

yet reached product market fit in which

talking to users would be extremely

beneficial those three stages are at the

idea stage before you've even begun

developing any any of your product at

the prototype stage where you have the

first kind of rough beginnings of your

product but you haven't really gotten in

the hands of any paying customers or any

users yet and the third one which is

after you've launched and you're

iterating towards product market fit how

do you guide that journey so I'll talk

about a few tips for for each phase at

the idea stage you may have the back of

a napkin idea you may have a thought may

or may be you may be commercializing

some technology that you've been

dreaming of but you don't yet have any

first users so you need to begin finding

the first people that will be interested

in either providing information about

the problem that they've encountered or

potentially signing up to be your first

users the best the best

you know people come to come to me to

ask how can i how can i talk and how can

i find my first users honestly some of

the best companies are

products or services that are built for

the founders themself so start with

yourself begin like test test your user

interview strategy on yourself try to

walk through a situation where you've

encountered that problem the next step

after that is to talk to friends is to

talk to co-workers to get warm

introductions

it doesn't take a lot of people you

don't have to talk to thousands of

people you every good user kind of

research strategy begins with just one

or two people the critical the critical

feature here is executing a unbiased and

and detailed customer or user interview

strategy rather than just trying to to

pitch your idea to them

another cool hack that that we've seen

some great success with actually a YC

company in this batch is using this - a

YC company this batch is actually

selling selling products to firefighters

and they realized that cold email

introductions was just not working was

not a way that they could get through to

the customers so what they did was they

actually just dropped by fire stations

in person they didn't even you know

email them to say that they were coming

ahead of time they just showed up and

they said hey could we speak to the fire

chief could we talk to someone about

this problem that were that we've got a

solution to and you know what it worked

great they managed to get dozens of

in-person no 10 to 15-minute long

meetings just by showing up so when in

doubt if there's a specific target

customer base that you're looking to get

feedback from just try showing up never

it feels a little bit weird because it

feels like you're imposing on someone

but at the end of the day the mindset

that I like to get into is if you truly

think that you're solving a problem that

your target customer base is facing

you'll actually be doing them ahead

you'll be helping them out by taking

their 15 minutes and and learning more

about the problem industry events are

another great way to get a number of new

customer interactions I remember that

when I was working on pebble we actually

went to CES which is this large consumer

electronics show in Vegas we didn't have

a booth

we just went in guerilla-style we just

like randomly started setting up in

setting up meetings with potential users

and we met them in like the coffee shop

I would side at the conference we did

that for $0 without any sort of

marketing budget just because that was

where a lot of people in the industry

were and we knew that there was like a

high concentration of potential people

that we could talk to some tips for this

stage take notes take detailed notes

because like I said before you don't

you'll never know until later which key

facts of these user interviews may be

useful if you're not great at taking

notes while you're talking to someone

bring a friend bring a co-founder ask

the person if you could record it

when in doubt capture as much

information as possible keep it casual

like I said before you can just show up

you don't have to like pre-planned this

you don't have to have you know 20

minute blocks on your calendar scheduled

for days on end of user interviews

feel free to react like honestly you'll

learn so much through the first 5 or 10

user interviews that you know you'll

your your process will dramatically

improve from those first interviews to

the next batch so don't feel like you

have to do a hundred user interviews all

at the same time just start with one

start with three start with five until

you get the hang of it the third thing

is you need to be cognizant of the other

person's time again going back to what I

said at the beginning you know we love

our idea we're founders we love talking

about our idea so you need to you need

to keep yourself in check and make sure

that you're cognizant to the other

person's time honestly you'll be able to

get probably the best information out of

say a ten to fifteen minute long first

interview and that might be all the time

you need just just for that initial chat

as you move past the ideas stage into

testing your your prototype with users

the next major kind of benefit that you

can that you can get from talking to

users is figuring out who will be your

best first customer this is critical

because it's possible that if you choose

the wrong first customer that you may be

led down a path that that constrains you

or artificially traps you without

actually getting paid by that first

customer so we've created a framework

that you can use to begin to identify

before you begin working with them who

the best first customers will be during

user interviews at this stage I love to

to ask questions that extract numerical

answers to three facts about the

customer that I'm working with the first

one that I like to get that I want to

get to the bottom of is how much does

this problem cost them today and I like

to get a hard number either in terms of

how much revenue do they stand to earn

if they solve this problem or how much

how much expense do they currently spend

trying to solve this problem how much

money is wasted today as they try to

solve this problem second one that I

like to get to the bottom of is how

frequently do they encounter this

problem do they encounter it on hourly

basis a daily basis quarterly basis

yearly basis the best the best problems

that startups can can target are ones

that are encountered more frequently

this is usually beneficial for two

reasons one is they encounter a problem

on a more regular basis it means that

the customers feeling the pain of that

problem on a more regular basis and

they'll be much more receptive to a

potential solution the second reason why

you want to tackle a problem that people

encounter on a more frequent basis is

you'll get more chances to know whether

your product is actually solving a

problem in my case with pebble I love

the fact that I was working on a device

that was kind of intended to be used

every day you know you wake up in the

morning you put your watch on that was

great for me because I knew that if they

weren't if users weren't wearing their

watch on a regular basis that meant that

I was doing something wrong so the best

first customers are ones that have this

problem very frequently the third thing

that you want to get to the bottom of is

how large is their budget for solving

this problem you can imagine that say

you're solving something for an

industrial assembly line problem on the

industrial assembly line if you're

talking to the operator the person who's

actually there on the kind of the

assembly line they may encounter this

problem on a really regular basis

but they just don't have the budget

they don't have the authority to

actually solve the problem that's their

boss so that's someone above them in the

in the office of in the headquarters so

again as you're trying to identify the

best first customers make sure that

you're trying to that make sure that

you're asking questions about whether

they actually have the ability to solve

the problem given the choice I like to

visualize answers to these to these

three sets of customer questions as

overlapping Venn diagrams with the best

first customer being at the center of

the Venn diagram where they have the

highest kind of numerical answers to the

three questions that I outlined so let's

take a quick example imagine if you're

working on like a super smart blender

that's designed to produce the the

tastiest new fruit smoothies you talked

to several users let's say you're

talking to McDonald's the French Laundry

and the Google cafe you create a

spreadsheet that simply has three

columns with the answers to the

questions that you've extracted through

your user interviews via this data can

actually be used in prioritizing which

customer you you begin to sell your

product to first so for example the

French Laundry is an amazing restaurant

up in Napa

maybe maybe they have an opportunity to

to roll out a new extremely fancy

over-the-top smoothie with your new

technology they can extract a lot of a

lot of money from each sale but the

frequency is not that high there's just

not that many customers that are

interested in a fruit smoothie at the

French Laundry and you're talking to

maybe the the sous-chef at the at the

restaurants so you realize that they

don't really have that much money to

solve this problem even if they wanted

to the other the other potential

customer that you're talking to is the

chef at one of the Google cafes

unfortunately for you Google gives away

their food for free to their employees

so that person doesn't actually stand to

earn more money or save that much more

money if they were to use your new

smoothie technology in their in their

restaurant granted there are a lot of

Googlers so there probably would be a

lot of smoothies made per week but at

the same time again you know they just

don't have the budget to be able to to

really dig into this problem so you

learn through the initial customer

interviews that McDonald's is actually

the best potential customer AB attention

potential first customer for your

product while even though the the the

cost of a new smoothie at McDonald's may

not bring in you know a large dollar

amount per transaction they have a ton

of stores and each of those stores

services a ton of people and on top of

that you happen to get a warm

introduction to the like chief food

officer of McDonald's which I'm not even

sure they have but that person actually

controls like a multi-billion dollar

budget and if they wanted to solve this

problem they would have the authority

and they would have the the budget to do

so and so you put that information in

your spreadsheet and you actually do

like a simple stack rank that just pulls

the best answers to those questions up

to the top and you can use this

framework for for kind of pulling

together all the information that you

get from various user surveys to to find

the best customers the last stage a four

product market fit that can benefit from

user interviews is actually the process

of iterating towards product market fit

Paul Graham's cut definition for product

market fit is when you've made something

that people want Marc Andreessen also

has an amazing blog post about product

market fit where he describes it as when

the product is just being pulled out of

you when you no longer have to push the

product on customers they're just

pulling it pulling it from you but the

problem with these definitions of

product market fit is that they're vague

they're also retroactive in that you

have to already have product market fit

in order to know that you've reached it

so they're not as useful for helping you

figure out which features you can use

which features you need to build in

order to iterate in order to improve

your product to get to product market

fit you may have heard of the app

superhuman which is a super fast email

client well the CEO published an amazing

blog post a little while ago about how

he built a well how he was actually

annoyed with this a vague definition of

what product market fit is and how it

was a lagging indicator that didn't help

him predict product market fit had only

told him whether he achieved it or not

he wanted to create a real-time

quantitative system that had that had

helped guide his company towards product

market fit and of course it involved

talking to users he wrote a great blog

post on this you could just google it I

would just gonna touch her kind of touch

on it but I would highly recommend

reading the entire thing because it is

it is fantastic but in it he describes a

process where on a weekly basis

he asks pretty much all his customers

but it doesn't even have to be your

entire customer base it could just be

you know 30 40 users a critical question

how would you feel if you could no

longer use superhuman three answers very

disappointed somewhat disappointed not

disappointed he measured the percentage

of users who answered the question very

disappointed

these are the users who most value your

product this is these are the users who

your product has now become a key part

of their life it's kind of weaseled

their way into their daily habits he

read some analysis that said that a 40

percent or more of your user base

reports that they would be very

disappointed if your product went away

on a weekly basis that that's kind of

the signal that's the the

differentiation point that it says if

you get past this point your product

will just grow exponentially and he

evaluated a number of other successful

companies and realized that the answer

to this question was always around or

above 40 percent so again I probably

won't be able to go into it too much

more in detail but I would recommend

reading this blog post if you're at the

stage where you're iterating and you

actively have users that you can ask

this question of this can be an

immensely useful thing for

quantitatively determining whether the

features that you worked on in the

previous week we're actually benefiting

or adding to your product market fit or

potentially detracting from it as well

some other great tips that we found at

this stage is kind of a simple hack ask

your users for the phone number during

signup because oftentimes you'll be

looking at the data and you'll be

wondering you know why did why is the

data showing this particular

kind of learning about our customers and

you maybe like thinking and aggregate

like you know 20% of people have this

problem sometimes it helps to just get

on the phone and talk to one person

who's encountering this problem so I

always encourage founders to put contact

to put contact information including

phone number which is like a direct

connection to customers pretty high up

in the user signup flow second one is

don't design by committee you can't

simply ask your users what features they

want you have to begin to understand

whether those features are truly going

to going to help make your product more

sticky and more useful you can do this

through kind of the the advice of the

superhuman CEO lays out in his blog post

or you could ask other tactical

questions like instead of asking you

know do Tweel users be interested in

using this new product or this new

feature instead say here's us here's an

upgrade flow if you want this new

product put your credit card or if you

want this new feature put your credit

card information or pay more even before

you actually built out the feature this

could help give you information about

whether the feature that you're working

on it's actually something that the

users are going to use the third thing

to do during user interviews at this

stage is to remember to discard bad data

some of the some of the kind of worst

bad data that you may encounter is

compliments people may say oh I love the

new design or man this thing is really

useful you may love that during the

course of user interviews but they

actually are not useful information

because it's not specific it's more of a

general statement about your product and

it's not tactical it's not giving you

correct information on what you can

change or what you can improve about

you're um you're probably the second

main type of bad data that you may

encounter is fluff they're hypotheticals

these are generation Eric statements

whenever you're in the middle of a user

interview and you start getting onto

onto this hypothetical you know oh

here's what it here's what the product

may look like in the future try to steer

it back to specifics again you're

conducting a user interview not to pitch

your product but to learn about problems

or the issues that the user has faced in

their past so that you can improve it in

the future

that's it that was meant to be like a

quick quick short dive into talking

talking to users I don't know if we have

any time for questions

cool awesome I'd love to answer any

questions but other than that thank you

thank you very much

[Applause]

you