The one where he's convinced he's the best

In a recent conversation, I spoke with a founder who had too much of a good thing: passion and optimism. He was convinced, with no validation, that his ambitious project was “the best”. He had an interesting idea, but had done no validation. He hadn’t talked to anyone in the value stream but wanted to jump into the go-to-market strategy. Anyone who’s ever spent any time with me knows that we love a positive person around here, but there’s a line between optimism and foolishness.

Even with me advising that he needs to check in with customers to validate what he’s trying to do, he insisted that he didn’t need to because he knew that he was building a great product. I gently asked him how he knew, which led to a lot of spluttering and saying that it was “obvious”.

Henry Ford didn’t do Founders any favors when he said, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse,” but you can only indulge yourself in Ford’s stance if you are bringing an unheard-of concept that is totally new to the market. I’m not talking “Uber for X”, I’m talking Uber as a totally new structure and social contract. Not to mention, today’s customers have a higher level of expectations than they did in 1903 when Ford brought his Model A to market.

Look, I get it. Our culture rewards visionaries, and our business landscape is ripe with opportunities for new products and services. However, not everyone with a good idea is a visionary. And just because you think you know, doesn’t mean you know.

The danger with not validating with customers isn’t being slower to market, it’s being quick to market with the wrong thing. It’s all well and good to put your all into your startup or business, but it breaks my heart when founders break their backs, only to produce something the market doesn’t want or even worse: wants, but won’t pay for.

This sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many founders and entrepreneurs agree that they need to talk to customers but don’t know how to talk to their customers or how to implement their findings, once they do. And I have so much empathy for founders and entrepreneurs who are so focused on velocity that they don’t have time to sit down and figure out how to effectively get and utilize customer feedback. But the best way forward is always to start by talking to the people who you’re hoping will be your eventual customers.

Hopefully, I’ve convinced you by now how customer feedback, even in the very earliest stages of ideation, can help you get to market faster and more profitably. And believe me, there are some incredibly sophisticated methods out there that can tell you things you can truly rely on. But in the very beginning, maybe you don’t necessarily need all that.

I recommend that you start small, with qualitative (see below if you don’t know this term) 1:1s, to start getting feedback on your ideas. Tweak and repeat. Ask other founders to trade feedback with you. See who in your network can provide valuable feedback. Also, don’t forget that there’s a large cohort with a lot of money who doesn’t necessarily live in the same online spaces as you do: Baby Boomers. Ask your parents, grandparents, and their friends (if they’re included in your target market).

Don’t forget to vigorously analyze the data you get. This step is critical to reduce bias because, often with qualitative data, certain things will resonate more than others with you. It takes discipline to step back and assess if the reason it resonates is because they said something you want to hear or because they’ve said something that others have said too. Topic coding is the process of identifying and counting topics from your transcripts.

Qualitative research explores through non-numerical data, such as interviews, focus groups, and observations. It is descriptive data and focuses on concepts, feelings, and opinions that can’t be quantified. Outputs are typically themes and words.

It’s best for exploring a topic you don’t know very much about or for getting very deep into a topic that you know.

Next time, we’ll share a story illustrating the importance of certain features within a product. My intention is to pair each story with some practical advice on how founders and entrepreneurs can use the learnings from each story to better their businesses.

▶ Find your people: Prolific is a sampling platform where you can filter by many different kinds of segmentations (including behavior and attitude) for a very reasonable cost. Great for gut-checks first thing.

Referral link will get you $30 off $125

▶ Ask them easily: Conjoint.ly is a sophisticated survey platform with a robust free tier.

Free tier doesn’t require a code, just sign up.

▶ Ask them right: Harvard University has a free tip sheet on how to write good survey questions.

Free to download, not gated.