How to get more user interviews for validating a market gap or problem existence?

Question

Hi All, I am looking to do more user interviews to understand customer needs and validate my idea (hopefully even early customers). However, just reaching out to friend and family circles seems to be limiting in nature, as they are not target customers. What methods or channels would you recommend to get more insights at very early stage of startup?

Accepted Answer

Posting on some slack communities for entrepreneurs is another good channel, especially if they are your target customers. I am sure similar communities exist for other domains too.

nilova.pande@qinaps.com · Answer

We created a landing page for https://qinaps.com/ and promoted it on LinkedIn and some FB groups. Those who left their emails were later contacted again and we set up telephonic interviews via Calendly. This really helped as we were able to demo and speak with users directly.

Ranvijay Singh · Answer

If you can create a Google form with 10 or less objective type questions (options to choose) and that takes lesser than a minute to complete, you can try LinkedIn, Facebook groups.

Anuj Vaishnav · Answer

@nilovapande Did you have a working MVP to demo or you used wire-frames/mock-ups? What stage did you move to this strategy?

Paul Nica · Answer

Find your target audience and make sure you will give them something in return if they complete your customer survey, I think this is the best way you can go about it

nilova.pande@qinaps.com · Answer

@anuj_vaishnav Hi Anuj, happy to e-meet you. Yes we have a working demonstrable SaaS product. We are still adding features to it almost every week based on feedback and of course the competitive landscape. Also this way we got a few responders with whom we could speak directly on the phone. We are not funded yet, also its been about 6 months of development and fine tuning. You can check it out here www.qinaps.com and give some feedback to me directly as well :). Hope this helps. We are still working on getting a Stripe payment up and running, its taking more time than anticipated and therefore we don't have a sign-up button yet. So once someone lands and fills out the web-form we send them the log-in details. Its a lengthy process, but we are working on bettering the experience for the testers and beta users.

Neeraj Patel · Answer

+1

Nikita Kanade · Answer

You can run a design sprint - a step by step recipe to go from idea to user tested and validated prototype in just 4 days without writing a single line of code. We at Viniage design have been using this process to help startups kickstart on their ideas to gain the necessary momentum to validate and launch new products. To know more write to me at nikita@viniagedesign.com

Darko Williams · Answer

I've been doing research on acquisition channels for 2 years now. Most of it is for getting paying users, though (like listing yourself on specific app stores, etc). Here are the top 10 acquisition channels which allow you to post content (meaning you can post your question & get feedback):

1. (sub)Reddit(s). Worked for 45 founders.
2. Cold email outreach. Worked for 42 founders.
3. "Ask HN"/etc. on HackerNews. Worked for 39 founders
4. Use your own (extended) network. Worked for 37 founders.
5. Niche communities (PH is one of them). Worked for 30 founders.
6. Twitter engagement (use Twitter search using relevant keywords). Worked for 28 founders.
7. Google Ads (may work?). Worked for 31 founders
8. FB Groups. Worked for 28 founders.
9. Quora. Worked for 20 founders.
10. FB ads (for cheap/er countries). Worked for 17 founders.

Hope this helped (edit: The full list is on the URL below my name).

Nikita Kanade · Answer

Meanwhile, you can get a glimpse of how this process works through our FREE remote decision sprint guide here https://freebie.viniagedesign.com/decisionsprintguide

Abe Winter · Answer

@unamashana yes! esp this year when IRL networking was a non-starter

How to get more user interviews for validating a market gap or problem existence?

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