You wanna avoid this mistake with your startup :D
Julia Suontama
25 replies
One mistake we made earlier was to ask ppl "Would you use our product" instead of just giving it to them. 99 % will say yes, because generally people want to be nice.
If you SPEND TIME explaining the concept, you need to give a chance for people to try the product asap. Even tho it's not pretty yet.
I mean, Boxio was not a pretty user experience for the first users, but we closed our eyer and gave it to people. I only wish we could have done it even earlier. Now there are 100 Mac ppl signed up.
Replies
Sergei Petrov@sergeipetrov
PingMi
Agree! Collecting real feedback is a very difficult task. Very often people do not want to tell the truth for various reasons.
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@sergeipetrov Indeed. Ofc they want to be nice but sometimes you just wish to have the most brutally honest feedback. Then I'm going to Reddit :D
Bababot
Good advice!
It's true that product creators sometimes overthink research, but neglecting certain phases can result in all kinds of trouble down the line.
For example, Boxio is already an established brand that sells portable toilets. Here's the link: https://boxio.de/en
Legaly speaking, it's a copyright infringement. True, that it's a different industry, but you'd do well to really make sure that the name can be used. I love your Boxio and I signed up for a PC waiting list.
Good luck with the platform!
@juliasuontama I just got an email notifying me that the Win version is out 😍! Congrats to you and your team 👏👏👏💥! You guys just saved me a looot of gray hair 😁. Your app kicks some serious ass! 🤘. Can't wait to get home to test the thing!
Same! I feel when we do user's research we need to figure out what situation it is. Sometimes people just being nice. Here is a tip for you, when you doing user research it is better to do depth interview than questionnaire, cuz you can generate your judgment through their micro-expressions.
@sylvia_sheng you’re spot on!! In the very early stage, depht interview helps to dig deeper and at the same time you’re building connections with early users. It helps with community building 💓
I agree, I think the most valuable lesson we've learned with Hurree is how important it is to gather feedback from churned trailers or customers.
Understanding how different users from different industries navigated through our platform has given us a completely different point of view. Especially when it came to sticking points which we assumed were simple.
Sometimes it's easy to get brain fog as a team when you're working on a product everyday 😅
@niamh_mcglade haha love the mention of brain fog - I feel it too sometimes. :D
But definitely, agree with you
Lancepilot
Insightful! I believe the best way to validate is to launch to users quickly, gather feedbacks and keep iterating. Does no good when we carry out so much surveys, trying to create the perfect products customers are going to like, not knowing really what their needs are.
Totally agree there's a marketing book "The mom test" and says that many marketing studies fails because we dont'n make the correct questions, and usually the answer for those incorrect questions came for someone trying to be nice and not being trully honest about the product.
@jahnmary_diaz I've been hearing this phrase 'The mom test' and it's been on the tip of my tongue for a while now. Thanks for this. Gonna read it tonight. :)
@jahnmary_diaz you’re spot on!! I actually used some phrases like this with our test users. E.g.: ”I want to know if anyone else than my mom thinks this idea might fly” 😂
Good point. Your customers will help you build and streamline the product by providing useful data.
Good advice!
Great advice. I think the greatest part of growing a business as an entrepreneur is learning more and more about human nature, and understanding people.
I totally agree with this advice, but I would like to add something to it.
Of course, if you can give the product that's the best thing to do. But if you're still building it and you're trying to validate your Product-Market-Fit, then - like you said - asking people does not work.
What you have to do is to ask people to have some skin in the game (by quoting the terms given by Alberto Savoia on these concepts). Examples are:
- booking 30 minutes for a chat/demo of what you have -> if people are willing to give you their time, they're genuinely interested
- leaving you their email: people are more and more against leaving their email, so if they do, they are interested in what you're proposing
- ask them if they want to be beta tester and offer them discounts in the future: this will provide you with feedback and, like above, if they give you some of their time it means they're genuinely interested!
Hope this adds something useful!
@gabriele_mazzola definitely added! Thanks for the insight.
There is no solution that fits for every situation, but generally, faster is better imo 😎