# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The ‘fatal mistake’ most people make starting a business, says Stanford professor who co-founded 4 startups: I’ve ‘seen this a million times’

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Not finding out what prospective customers want and need is a crucial mistake that often dooms founders to failure, says entrepreneurship expert Steve Blank.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.entities[].name
Approach Strangers for Customer Interviews

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Good and Bad Examples of Customer Interview Questions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
LIFFFT's Whiteboard Wednesday videos on Customer Development. Turns out, there is such a thing as a stupid question. How many times have you sent out a survey with answers like "1-3 times a week, 4-7 times a week, 8+ times a week?"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We use the value proposition canvas to help innovation teams design products and services customers actually want. Although one question we get all the time (especially from new users of the value proposition canvas) is: Do you always start with the customer?
The last couple of decades have seen an overwhelming focus on customers. I have yet to advise a company whose vision or strategy doesn't include an acute customer focus. And this plethora of customer-driven organisations rely more and more on methodologies such as Design Thinking which starts with an empathetic and exploratory approach toward the customer. But a good idea doesn't have to become a dogma.

In this post we explain why you don't always have to start with the customer, but you always have to end with the customer - especially the validation of fit between the customer (as mapped in your customer profile) and your product/service (as designed in your value map).

1 - Fishing for customer insights

The innovation journey of many teams starts with a customer discovery process and a large number of customer interviews. In many corporate innovation programmes, it has become a design principle that teams cannot advance to the next stage of the programme and access more funding before having completed a large number of customer interviews, sometimes as high as 100 interviews in a 6-12 week window.

Why this focus on customer interviews?

There are many benefits to doing many customer interviews early in the innovation process:

1. Consistent customer feedback helps innovators to not fall in love with their initial ideas, and thus avoid one of the most dangerous pitfalls facing entrepreneurs.

2. Customer interviews are the simplest form of testing innovators can do. When done properly, these interviews can provide early evidence on the most critical assumptions.

3. After a while, these interviews will lead to a deeper customer understanding and to critical insights for designing a product or service that customers want.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We use the value proposition canvas to help innovation teams design products and services customers really want, but do you always start with the customer?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If you routinely interview customers before building a new product or rolling out a major feature, your process might look something like this:

1. Kickoff a study

2. Plan to interview 10-15 people over two weeks

3. Run interviews / take lots of notes

4. Circle back with the team to make sense of your notes

5. Look for patterns and prioritize problems worth solving

6. Formulate...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Way We Do Customer Discovery is About to Fundamentally Change

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you routinely interview customers before building a new product or rolling out a major feature, your process might look something like this: Kickoff a study Plan to interview 10-15 people over two weeks Run interviews / take lots of notes Circle back with the team to make sense of your notes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Get outside the building" is one of the battle cries of the Customer Development/Lean Startup movement, popularized by Steve Blank. This is a call for validating the riskiest assumptions in your business idea as early as possible with evidence-based facts you gather by interacting with customers.
But it is possible to rush outside too quickly -- only to get stuck later.
Yes, it is highly tempting for action-driven entrepreneurs to want to "rush out of the building" and immediately start testing their business model on customers. It's even possible to quickly find clusters of problems, pitch an offer, build a quick MVP, and charge your customers from day one -- which sounds exactly like what you should do.

So what's wrong with this approach?
The danger is getting stuck with a sub-optimal business model six or nine months down the line that either doesn't match your ambition or isn't scalable.
This is precisely the trap I found myself in with one of my early products that I will share with you in today's issue.

I'm going to pick up this story in the summer of 2009 when I was launching a new product: CloudFire - a "scratch your own itch product."

I had recently become a parent and watched my wife struggle with sharing photos and videos with family and friends (remember that this was 2009). Having already built a few products that went nowhere, I didn't want to fall into another build trap. So, I committed to carving out two months for customer development to validate my problem/solution assumptions.

I reached out to friends who had also become new dads, like myself, who quickly pointed me to the moms doing the bulk of the sharing. With the help of my wife's network, referrals, and a few other channels, I managed to run over 60 problem interviews over six weeks.

Almost everyone I spoke with related to the struggle of sharing lots of photos. Their workaround was to hand-pick a few pictures every week and send them over email. This only reinforced my problem assumptions, and my confidence grew.

I put together a quick demo over the next two weeks and then spent the next four weeks pitching my demo (and offer) to these parents. I managed to get over 70% of my prospects to agree to test-drive my product which I packaged as a 30-day trial and then charged $49/year. By the end of these solution interviews, I amassed an early access list of 50 parents, which seemed like a good starting batch size of customers.

I shifted focus to building out a minimum viable product (MVP). It took another two months to get the product in the hands of my first customers.

Then my focus shifted to onboarding.

I spent many in-person sessions showing parents how to use the product, recording quick-start videos, and answering support questions. All were leading up to the moment of truth: Would people upgrade at the end of 30 days?

No funnel converts at 100%. I ended up with a 50% conversion rate, which was still highly encouraging. Many parents didn't outright cancel but asked for more time to evaluate the product citing "life getting in the way." I extended their trials and split my time across driving more new trials, supporting existing customers, and building new features.

Being a solo founder on this project, there were days when I just sat in my armchair for an hour trying to prioritize what to take on that day. I knew I'd eventually need to bring a co-founder on board but the product wasn't making enough revenue to justify that.

Maybe it was time to raise a seed round?

So I contacted a fellow entrepreneur, a longtime friend, and an angel investor.

I gave him a quick update and asked for his advice on fundraising. At this point, nine months since I started, I had 500 paying customers, translating to $25k in revenue.

Friend: "While you've made a lot of progress, you'll need to show better metrics to get an investor's attention."

Me: "Yes, I know the revenue number isn't that impressive yet, but doesn't 500 customers de-risk the product for an early-stage investor? The market for parents is big enough with lots of growth potential."

Friend: "Yes, that's a great start. But it would help if you showed a roadmap for how you'll intersect your investor's expectations at product/market fit. Right now, my instincts tell me that something is off here...."

He pulls out his notebook and walks me through a 5-minute back-of-the-envelope calculation to test the viability of my idea.

We determined that to pitch my idea to an investor, I'd need to 4x the number of customers (from 500 to 2,000) in the next three months. And then grow that to 20,000 customers by the end of year 2 and 200,000 customers by the end of year 3.

Me: "These are crazy numbers. I don't see how I'll get there unless my product goes viral. I guess I was betting on going after a big market, but I see now that simply relying on top-down sizing of any market can be misleading."

Friend:" That's right. 'I just need 1% of a big market' is what everyone uses, but the real pudding in the pie is demonstrating how you get there in 2-3 years."

Just then, a thought comes to my mind.

Me: "I can't help but notice that pricing is one of the key metrics that destroyed my business model. If I could charge more for my product, I'd need fewer customers."

Friend: "Pricing is a powerful lever, but can you charge parents a lot more than $50/year since their current solution is email, which is free?"

Me: "I wasn't thinking of parents, but wedding photographers. Just the other day, a wedding photographer who is also a parent reached out over email and was wondering if I'd consider creating a Pro version of CloudFire. He loves the product and was inquiring if I'd be up for building some integrations into products he uses in his workflow, like Lightroom and Photoshop. Given it would be a B2B product, I'm guessing I could charge 3x or 4x more...."

Friend: "I think you could charge 10x more. Instead of $49/year, you could easily set pricing at $49/mo and probably go even higher. Set up a call with him immediately."

On the ride home, while I'm deflated about my busy parents business model, I'm excited about the potential of pivoting to a more promising new customer segment.

I think to myself: "I'm glad I reached out to my friend when I did, or I would have kept going like this for who knows how long."

I rationalize the last nine months as the price of learning, until I get hit with another depressing thought: "Nothing we did in that back-of-the-envelope calculation required a working product. I could have done that math nine months ago and reached the same conclusion! "

In my exuberance for "getting outside the building," I rushed out too quickly. And even though I started with a rough sketch for my business model (using a Lean Canvas) and gave some thought to key metrics, I didn't know how to properly stress-test my business model.

Had I known what I knew after that meeting, I would have saved nine months of my life.

That experience completely changed how I pursued future projects.

Before engaging in several weeks and months of customer validation, it's prudent to spend a few more hours (inside the building) stress-testing your business model and tightening up any apparent cracks or flaws in your thinking.

On the surface, this may seem counter to one of the key tenets of Lean/Continuous Innovation: Using small and fast experiments to test your riskiest assumptions quickly.
If running experiments is the most effective way for testing assumptions and speed is key, then why spend more time refining your rough assumptions?
Because it is possible to effectively stress-test your assumptions using thought experiments before you test your assumptions using empirical experiments.

Before dismissing thought experiments as sub-par, remember that Albert Einstein used thought experiments, not empirical ones, to formulate the theory of relativity.

If thought experiments can work for scientific inquiry, don't you think they can also be applied to entrepreneurial inquiry?

What I'm advocating here isn't simply refining your business model through brainstorming but rather using well-structured thought experiments to stress test your business model.

There are at least three business model stress tests I put all my ideas through before getting outside the building. These stress tests check for desirability, viability, and feasibility. This post covered viability.

Here's why:

Running thought experiments is much faster than running empirical experiments saving you time.

Thought experiments help you fix fatal flaws in your thinking, saving you from having to backtrack from a dead-end.

Thought experiments help you prioritize the riskiest assumptions facing you now versus those you can defer to later, helping you focus on the right things.

Finally, it's important to emphasize that thought experiments do not replace empirical experiments.
Passing these stress tests doesn't guarantee that your business model will work. But not passing these stress tests does guarantee that your business model will not work.
Falsifiability or testing for invalidation (versus validation) is another tenet in the Lean/Continuous Innovation Framework taken from the scientific method. In other words, the job of an experiment isn't limited to just paving the right path. Eliminating dead-ends is progress too.

The true job of an entrepreneur is systematically de-risking their business model before running out of resources.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Get outside the building" is one of the battle cries of the Customer Development/Lean Startup movement, popularized by Steve Blank. This is a call for validating the riskiest assumptions in your business idea as early as possible with evidence-based facts you gather by interacting with customers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
FirstRound's Airtable Article | David J. Bland Reacts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Good customer interviews are a cheap and fast way to kick off the search and design of your Value Proposition. But how do you ask your customers the right questions to collect the best facts? It's a question our community has asked us frequently, so in this post I've compiled a few best practice suggestions for you to come back to in one handy blog post.

Familiarize yourself with some ground rules.

There are 8 ground rules we provide to help you and your team conduct solid customer interviews. I'll quickly highlight the 8 rules here because they'll come in handy later on in this post:

Ask "why" to get real motivations

Access FREE Customer Development Tools
The tools and resources mentioned in this post are available for FREE in our resource library. Get access to 30+ other tools and resources to help you design a business that your customers will love. Simply create an account for access.

Let's look at some concrete tips for designing good customer questions.

I've pulled some great, quick examples from co-founder Alex Osterwalder's Q&A sessions on Value Proposition Design.
Frame the conversation around your customers' jobs, pains, and gains.
It's really important that you don't start with your solution or value proposition in mind (#6 from the ground rules above). Keep your value proposition in the back of your mind, and focus on the jobs, pains, and gains of your customers. This will allow you to remove your bias from the conversation; and instead, focus on what interests your customers.
Use the Value Proposition Canvas as the basis for designing interview questions.
The Value Proposition Canvas is a useful and powerful tool that can be used before, during, and after your customer interviews.

Before you conduct interviews, use the Value Proposition Canvas to design questions that are specific to the jobs, pains, and gains of your customers (as mentioned above).

During the interviews, use the Value Proposition Canvas for note taking. Write down what you're hearing when it comes to jobs, pains, and gains directly onto the right hand side of the Canvas.

After the interview, you can use the Value Map on the left hand side of the Canvas to plot out potential products or services, pain relievers, and gain creators.

Remember: Interviews are just a start.

It's always important to complement your interviews with quick and cheap experiments to gather concrete evidence. This will allow you to truly observe the difference between what customers say and what customers do. Here are some links to help you create focused experiments:

How else can we help you to better connect with your customers? Let us know in the comments!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Quick Guide To Asking Good Customer Questions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Good customer interviews are a cheap and fast way to kick off the search and design of your Value Proposition. But how do you ask your customers the right questions to collect the best facts?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I've had a few requests for this post. I've compiled all of my favorite customer development questions into one place! I'm sure I've missed some great questions. Please let me know your favorites in the comments sections and I'll continually update this post.

Included are questions that can be asked throughout the product development lifecycle - from identifying problems/generating ideas to improving a live product.

Some quick notes before I get on with the list:

Ask why or why not with many of these. I didn't want to list it each time. Usually people will say why or why not without being prompted if you're interviewing them live. But if not, ask them.

A lot of these will yield similar responses to each other. Pick 1 or more from each group that you think would be best given your situation.

In addition to the questions below, many products seem to require specific questions that aren't "template-able," especially in the product discover-validation phases.

Alright on with the ultimate list of customer development questions:

Customer Segmentation

Depending on how you obtained the interview/how much background you have on the person, you may need to make sure they are within your customer segment, and/or understand more about their demographic. I usually try to keep it to a max of three.

What do you do professionally?

Who handles [process you're improving] at your home/office?

Tell me about your role at [company]?

How much time do you spend on [process you're improving]?

[Specific questions related to your product/customer] - for example, do you have kids?

Problem Discovery

Questions to validate your hypothesis about a problem, or to learn about problems.

What's the hardest part of your day?

What are some unmet needs you have?

What product do you wish you had that doesn't exist yet?

What tasks take up the most time in your day?

What could be done to improve your experience with [process/role]?

What's the hardest part about being a [demographic]?

What are your biggest/most important professional responsibilities/goals?

What are your biggest/most important personal responsibilities/goals?

Problem Validation

If your customer did not talk about the problem you wanted to address, use the below questions to begin validating/invalidating that your customer has the problem you think they have. In addition, it's often not enough to just solve a problem, sometimes it also needs to be one that people are highly motivated to solve. Some of the below questions can help with that too.

Do you find it hard to [process/problem]?

How important is [value you're delivering] to you?

Tell me about the last time you [process you're improving] - listen for complaints

How motivated are you to solve/improve [problem/process]?

If you had a solution to this problem, what would it mean to you/how would it affect you?

Product Discovery

Questions to help generate ideas or to validate your idea. The below questions are intentionally very open-ended. By asking yes or no questions specifically related to your product, customers may feel inclined to agree with you or not be critical. By asking more open ended questions, you can be more confident that they're giving you honest input. If in response to the questions below, your customers tell you they're looking for similar to what you have in mind, you might be on to something.

What do you think could be done to help you with [problem]?

What would your ideal solution to this problem look like?

If you could wave a magic wand and instantly have any imaginable solution to this problem, what would it look like? - I've found that about 80% the time the answers I get to this question are not very informative - solutions that aren't feasible or most certainly wouldn't be profitable. But the other 20% of the time there are some really informative responses that make the other 80% acceptable.

What's the hardest part about [process you're improving]?

What are you currently doing to solve this problem/get this value?

What do you like and dislike about [competing product or solution]?

Product Validation

Questions to validate/invalidate your idea.

What do you think of this product? - this question is intentionally vague. Listen to whether they talk about wanting to use the product or how it could be improved. Given how vague the question is, the former is positive, while the latter may be a sign that improvement is needed.

Would this product solve your problem?

How likely are you/would you be to tell your friends about this product?

Would you ever use this product?

Would you be willing to start using this right away?

What might prevent you from using this product? - might reveal ways that you could improve the product. Potential hurdles might be budget, time, perception's of the product's value, a competing product, etc.

Will you pay $x for this product? - see if they will put their proverbial money where their math is. Often times when you ask this question, no matter how small the price, you will start hearing key insights that you wouldn't have heard otherwise.

Product Optimization

Questions to help you improve your idea or product.

What could be done to improve this product?

What would make you want to tell your friends about this product?

What's most appealing to you about this product?

What might improve your experience using the product?

What motivates you to continue using this product?

What's the hardest part about using this product?

What features do you wish the product had?

Ending Interviews

Questions to ask at the end of an interview. You may also need to ask for their contact information if you don't already have it.

[Summarize some of your key takeaways] - is that accurate? - I usually do this throughout the interview.

So based on the conversation, it sounds like x is really hard for you, but y is not. How accurate is that?

It sounds like x is very important to you, while y is not. How accurate is that?

Is there anything else you think I should know about that I didn't ask?

Do you know anyone else who might also have this problem that I could ask similar questions to? - small form of validation if they're willing to give you referrals

Can I keep you in the loop on how the product develops?

Can I follow up with you if I have more questions?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I've had a few requests for this post. I've compiled all of my favorite customer development questions into one place! I'm sure I've missed some great questions. Please let me know your favorites in the comments sections and I'll continually update this post.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Plan a Successful Solution Test Interview — Product Discovery Group

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When I first started interviewing users, I struggled to analyze the results. We weren’t organized in how we asked for user feedback. And so analysis took too long.