004 - Compliments are like fake phone numbers, they're not progress
This week I conducted 10 user interviews, and wow did they tell me a lot. If you're a founder interested in building a product - actually if you're involved with building a product in anyway, user interviews are an absolute must and should not be missed. They're the best way for your users to tell you what their problems are, as well as spark a whole set of ideas that can make your product significantly better.
My initial criteria for folks I wanted to interview was anyone who has traveled at least once internationally in the last 5 years, and who travels at least twice a year (domestically or internationally).
Before conducting my interviews, I spent a fair amount of time researching how to conduct a user interview, especially since I'm still in the ideation phase. One of the resources that kept popping up was The Mom Test. I'll admit, I haven't read the book yet (limited time and all that ;)), however I did watch a few videos the author, Rob Fitzpatrick, shared and they were great.
The general idea is that you want to get unbiased information from the person you're interviewing. What this means is the person you're interviewing should have no idea what you're working on. Start asking them questions, and dig deep whenever they mention anything interesting that's related to your problem space. This is the best way to understand what type of problems the user is facing, and how they've tried to fix or handle it in the past - effectively, what hacky solutions have they built to solve the problem.
After I finished the official questions, I'd give the interviewee a high level idea of what I'm thinking of building, then open the floor for them to ask questions and give feedback. The most important part about this was identifying whether or not they would want to use my product, and what concerns they have about my product.
These conversations have been extremely enlightening. They've helped narrow down my focus, validate some of my hypothesis, and give me a better idea of the type of customer I should be targeting. While all of these are extremely valuable, the most important thing that these interviews gave me was better ideas of how to solve the problems that potential users are facing. Most people gave ideas or suggestions of a feature they'd like to see, or a use case they'd want covered, and there's always a few I hadn't thought of.
Since I'm still in the ideation phase of the journey, these could be classified as "User Discovery Interviews", where I'm trying to identify my user and figure out how to build a solution for them. However no matter what stage of the product development process you're in, you should be conducting user interviews to get feedback on your product and find ways to improve problems that real customers are facing.
If you're interested in participating in a User Discovery Interview (it'll be a quick 30 minute video call), I'd love to chat with you! Feel free to fill out this form, and pass it on to anyone else who you think may be interested. If you don't want to do interviews, but would like updates, fill out the form anyway :)
Find Me Online
I'll be speaking on a Fireside panel about How To Achieve Your Career Goals Using Effective Accountability Systems. The talk is on Wednesday at 11am EST.
I'm hosting another Virtual Quiz Night Fundraiser - this time it'll be F.R.I.E.N.D.S themed! All money raised goes to folks impacted by COVID-19.
New Blog Posts
How to Create a Blog Using GatsbyJS and Netlify - Building on from previous weeks posts, this post dives into how to setup a Gatsby-powered blog post on our site.
Little Plugs
I like the idea of plugging interesting projects that I see around the internet.
Indepth Guide to Product Discovery
Tim Bray, SVP of AWS, quit Amazon - Tim Bray quit because he didn't like how Amazon fired whistle blowers that were trying to make warehouse workers safer given COVID-19. This was a powerful statement!
YCombinator Startup Themes - thinking about exploring some themes for your own startup? YC has some great themes to start you off.
Interesting Events This week
Here are some events I'm attending this week
How To Achieve Your Career Goals Using Effective Accountability Systems - by me :) The talk is on Wednesday at 11am EST.
Mark Cuban speaking at Elevate - My family is binging Shark Tank at the moment, and Mark Cuban is one of our top two sharks (can you guess who the other one is?). He'll be speaking at Elevate - a now virtual sequence of tech events.
Pitchers and Pitches - a TechCrunch Pitch Night
Quote of the week
Come from Rob Fitzpatrick, the author of The Mom Test
Compliments Are Like Fake Phone Numbers, They're Not Progress
Question Time!
I'd love to get to know my audience better, and hope that you reply to this email or tweet me an answer:
If you've watched Shark Tank, what is the best pitch you've seen on the show?