Trying to build a startup is akin to juggling five balls while balancing a watermelon on your head, explaining to your parents why you're leaving university, and eating hot peppers all at once. Maybe a bit excessive but you get the point. Trying to build a startup is hard, the majority of startups fail and that’s just the truth. Besides developing a great product or service, assembling an outstanding team, managing finances, and creating an effective marketing campaign, you must also understand your customers' problems. In fact, if you think about it, this should probably be your first step before you invest the next three years into your amazing startup idea.

Contents of the article:

• Introduction

• The Mom Test

• Bad Data

• Finding Conversations

• Asking important questions

• The Startup Friendzone

• Choosing your customers

• Meetings Bottlenecks

• Cheatsheet and extras

Introduction

Do you remember those moments where you had yet another brilliant idea, became really excited about it, and rushed up the stairs to share it with your mom? Yes, me too! Like me, and many others, you might have just been waiting for that bit of validation before you could dash back to your garage to create the next Macintosh. But somehow, your idea never saw the light of day. Why is that? Why don’t your ideas actually work?

Could your idea be lacking? No, that can't be it. Your idea is great, the world just doesn’t know it yet. But maybe yet another events app isn't really necessary. But your idea is still amazing, right? Perhaps people simply don't grasp your vision yet. They just can't see how smart and innovative you are!

Have you ever had this train of thought? I must admit that I certainly have. So, how do you avoid becoming infatuated with your own idea, before it leads you to madness and sorrow? How can you communicate effectively with your customers to avoid creating products that nobody wants to buys in the end?

Think about the following two questions before moving on. Do you notice anything?

• So here is the project I quit my job for…what do you think?
• I can take it - be honest and tell me what you really think.

The Mom Test

Basically, it is just a set of simple rules that helps you craft good questions that “even your mom can’t lie to you about”:

• Talk less and listen more

• Talk about their life instead of your idea

• Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future

The issue often starts with us seeking personal validation for our ideas, rather than checking their viability with consumers and the market. Our subconscious need for appreciation can influence how we ask questions or conduct conversations. We may strive to convince others and even ourselves that our ideas are fantastic, rather than researching the problems that those around us actually face.

Here are a couple of awful questions we all ask (and the reason they are awful):

Q: Do you think my idea it’s great?
Opinions are worthless (you don’t validate through opinions, but through actions).

Q: Would you buy a product which did X or Y?
Anything involving the future is an overoptimistic quote.

Q: How much would you pay for X?
People will lie to you if they think it’s what you want to hear.

Okay, but how to improve on your questions? Let’s try the following instead:

Q: Why do you bother with X? What does it mean to you?
Understand customers needs and problems.

Q: What are the implications to that?
Some problems don’t actually matter.

Q: Talk me through the last time that happened.
See where the problems actually are.

Q: What else have you tried?
If they haven’t looked for ways of solving it already, they are not going to look for yours.

Q: How are you dealing with it now?
Who else should I talk to? Is there anything else I should have asked?\ porn big tits bowjobs People usually tend to want to help you. Give them an excuse to do so!

Bad Data

Bad data gives us false negatives and more dangerously, false positives. The most common three types are:

• Compliments

• Fluff (generics, hypotheticals, and the future)

• Ideas

Compliments are the fools gold of customer learning: shiny, distracting, worthless. Avoid compliments and try to get to the truth instead of getting blinded and seeking your own self validation instead. I know, hard!

Regarding fluffs, the following are pretty common:

• Generic claims (I usually, I always, I never)

• Future tens promises (I would, I will)

• Hypothetical maybe (I might, I could)

Watch out for the deadliest fluff out there:

• I would definitely buy that (couple of months later when prompted, they suddenly changed their phone number)

Also, there are a couple of question that we usually tend to ask that induce fluff based responses:

• Do you ever?

• Would you ever?

• What do you usually?

• Do you think you?

• Might you?

• Could you see yourself?

Rather than getting lost in irrelevant details, wait and look for emotional signals from the people you're conversing with. Use the following questions to delve deeper:

• Tell me more about that.

• That really seems to bug you.

• What makes it so awful?

Sometimes, not matter how careful you try, you still end up in pitch mode. Identify when you fall into it and try to reestablish yourself:

• No, I don’t think you get it!

• Yes, but it also does this!

And just remember, anyone will say your idea is great if you’re annoying enough about it. Try to talk less and understand that the more you’re talking the worse you’re doing.

Finding Conversations

Try to maintain a casual approach when possible. Embrace your surroundings and try to seize spontaneous interactions. You might be in a coffee shop and overhear someone discussing a problem similar to yours, or you might strike up a conversation at an event with someone who has encountered a problem identical to the one you're trying to solve. Many people appreciate an informal meeting and are likely to open up without much effort. This is common sense, right?

Try to avoid the tendency to schedule every opportunity for customer conversations just to feel productive and busy. Simplify as much as you can and instead use your time to work on the product or spend time with your family and friends. Try to keep in mind that if the person you're trying to talk to feels that they're doing you a favor by speaking with you, then it's probably too formal. Embrace serendipity, make the most of the moment, and let things unfold casually.

When you decide to hold a meeting, keep in mind the following frame:

• Vision - half sentence of how you’re making the world better

• Framing - where you're at and what you’re looking for

• Weakness - where you’re stuck and how you can be helped

• Pedestal - show that they, in particular, can provide that help

• Ask - just ask for help, that simple

If you really can't remember this by any means, use the following mnemonic: Very few Wizards properly ask (for beer)

Finally, remember to prepare your questions in advance. And once again, don't conduct interviews simply to fill your calendar and impress your friends on Instagram. Instead, ask yourself what you hope to learn from each particular individual.

Understand that every meeting has an opportunity cost. When you’re traveling to that meeting you aren’t writing code, generating leads or drinking beer with your friends. (yes, I do like beer)

One good rule of the thumb is to keep having conversations until you stop learning new things during the meetings.

Asking important questions

Whenever you talk to someone, you should try to ask at least one question that might have the potential to destroy your currently imagined business, no matter how uncomfortable that might be. It's better to reach an unpleasant conclusion early on than to wait months on end only to discover the same thing. Don’t do that to yourself, or your team.

Type of questions to ask in order to figure out if the problem does actually matter:

• How seriously do you take X or Y activity?

• How do you make money from it?

• Have you tried making more money from it?

• How much time do you spend on it each week?

• What are you already doing to improve this?

• What are the 3 big things you’re trying to fix or improve right now?

Questions to ask for the risks involved with your product:

• Can I build it?

• Can I grow it?

• Can I sell it?

Questions to ask for customer / market risk:

• Do they want it?

• Will they pay me?

• Are there lots of them?

Remember, before progressing to an actual conversation, make sure you've conducted thorough research to gather as much information as possible. Don’t waste your time or other people’s time. Decide together with your team and then prepare the 3 most important things you want to learn from any given type of person.

The Startup Friendzone

The key to avoiding the startup friend zone is to constantly push for advancement and commitment. By this, I mean that every interaction with a potential customer should have a clear next step and involve some form of commitment. This could be a commitment of time, such as agreeing to a follow-up meeting, or a more concrete commitment such as a pre-order or investment. If a meeting ends with just a compliment but no clear next step, then it's likely that you've been “friend zoned” even in business.

Startup friend zone symptoms:

• A pipeline of zombie leads

• Product meetings that end with a compliment

• Product meeting that end with no clear next step

• Meeting that haven't given anything of value

• Meeting which “went well”

Commitment:

How do you know if they are committed? Usually, they are showing they are serious by giving up something they value such as:

• time

• reputation

• money

Advancement:

Meetings either succeed or fail. No such thing as a meeting which just “went well”. You've lost the meeting when you leave with a compliment or a stalling tactic. A meeting is successful when it ends with a clear commitment to advance to the next step. So basically, if you don’t know what happens next after a product or sales meeting, the meeting was pointless and you’ve been friend zoned.

Choosing your customers

“They say that startups don’t starve, they drown. You never have too few options, too few leads, or too few ideas; you have too many. You get overwhelmed. You do a little bit of everything.”

Customer segmentation

Before serving everyone, we have to serve someone. Forget about all the possibilities and focus on who would most likely buy. If you aren’t finding consistent problems and goals, you don’t have a specific enough customer segment, so go and find one. Start small, find your best early customers, such as early evangelists.

Customer slicing

• Within this group, which type of person would want it most?

• Would everyone within this group buy / use it?

• Why does that subset want it?

• What additional motivations are there?

Meetings Bottlenecks

After you finish a meeting, ensure that you share the new information with your entire founding team. Learning bottlenecks can occur at either end: the founder may not effectively share the information, or the product team may not want to deal with customers' feedback.

Symptoms of a learning bottleneck:

• You just worry about the product. I’ll handle the customers

• Because the customers told me so!

• I don’t have time to be talking to people - I need to be coding.

Avoid bottlenecks by:

• Prepping

• Reviewing

• Taking good notes (which are useless if you never look at them)

Process before conversation:

• Choose a focused segment

• Decide with the team on the 3 big learning goals

• Find out who to talk to

• Create a series of best guesses about what the person cares about

• If a question can be answered via research, do that first

During the conversation:

• Frame the conversation

• Keep it casual

• Ask good questions that pass “The Mom Test”

• Deflect compliments, anchor fluff and dig beneath signals

• Take good notes

• If possible, press for commitment and advancements

After conversation:

• Review notes with team

• If notes are relevant, store them

• Update beliefs and plans

• Decide on the 3 big questions

Cheatsheet and extras

Mistakes and symptoms during conversations:

• Fishing for compliments

• Exposing your ego (The Pathos Problem)

• Being pitchy

• Being too formal

• Being a learning bottleneck

• Collecting compliments instead of facts and commitments

The 7 degrees of bacon

If you struggle to find the right person to speak to, remember that the world is relatively a small place. Everyone knows someone. We just have to remember to ask.

Early evangelists (Your best first customers)

The people who:

• Have the problem
• Know they have the problemHave the budget to solve the problem
• Have cobbled together their own makeshift solution

Feature Requests:

When you hear a request, it’s your job to understand the motivation that led to it. You do that by digging around the root question to find the root cause.

Questions to dig into feature requests:

• Why do you want that?

• What would that let you do?

• How are you coping without it?

The Gordian Knot Example

Just hack it if possible, don’t over complicate things just for the sake of it. Seek simplicity, make life less convoluted.

This article was heavily inspired by Rob Fitzpatrick's book and uses information from the "The Mom Test".

P.S Big thanks to the digital iLab for having such a good collection of books in their library and allowing me to borrow them.