One of the challenges of interviewing customers, is analyzing the results. I’m typically left with a pile of terse notes, and a handful of questions: What were the most common pains? If my assumption was invalidated, what do I do next? Were there any major themes that I missed? My solution? Post-It Notes. Video walk-through below. Example

  Interviewing Customers is a Special Kind of Torture Talk to a stranger. Fun. That stranger is immensely busy…and hates being sold things. Getting better. That stranger will likely destroy your vision for a company. Ready to get started?! When I started interviewing customers, the only thing I cared less about than talking about other people’s problems,

In this article you’ll learn exactly who you should be interviewing, where, and how to find them. In Part 1 of this series on Early Adopters, we talked about two aspects of Early Adopters: What are Early Adopters? Who are yours? Make sure you’ve read Early Adopters Part 1: Who They Are. It’s fundamental you

The first step in finding Product Market Fit is to define it. Let’s start by answering the question: What is Product Market Fit? The term was first coined by Mark Andreesseen. To him, Product Market Fit meant: “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.”   It’s a helpful starting

On the path to your Product Market Fit, not all potential customers are created equal—at least, not at the beginning. The first group of people you need to win over are your Early Adopters. In this post, you’ll figure out who your Early Adopters are, but first, we need to get on the same page

How we got a dozen launch-day write ups with a little JavaScript, Mechanical Turk, and the Google News API. Code included. Warning: you only launch once. I don’t recommend generating press until you’ve validated your customer segment(s), their pain(s), and much of your solution. Here’s why: That said, lets hack some press… Getting press is daunting for

tl;dr Using clever survey questions to quickly test the memorability, spellability and emotional response of potential domain names. Glad we did – almost picked a lousy one. Problem: Domain Squatters I’ve found what should be the joyous process of naming a company, quickly devolves into in argument over which of the abysmal choices of available

Good ideas matter. It’s hard to start a company if you don’t have an idea. But… having one business idea is never enough. Let me show you why. Imagine you have an idea that you’re really passionate about. You set out excited to validate it with potential customers, but the feedback you get is disappointing.