“It’s about saving time, saving money, de-risking, and helping teams make decisions with confidence.” For early-stage startups, the impact of faster, more efficient customer research cannot be overstated. GV UX Research Partner Michael Margolis wrote Learn More Faster: How to Find Your Bullseye Customer and Their Perfect Product to help founders quickly identify key insights and refine product offerings. Explore takeaways and preview the framework in a 30-minute Lightning Lesson, hosted by Maven: https://maven.com/p/eb4715
Recently, I had the privilege to conduct a Maven lightning lesson to share tips for finding your ideal customer and unique value prop faster based on my free book, Learn More Faster. Here are four key lessons from the talk for any early-stage startup founders and product leaders looking to accelerate customer learning and discovery: 🎯 Focus on your bullseye customers: Zero in on the very specific subset of customers who are initially most likely to adopt your product. And set aside the rest for now. When defining inclusion and exclusion criteria, go beyond demographics to consider customers’ behaviors, and use of other products. And brainstorm specific events and experiences (“triggers”) that might make some customers even more receptive to your product. 💬 Conduct small batches of open-ended interviews: Schedule five 1-hour interviews in one day to make it much faster and easier to see the patterns. 💡 Compare simple prototypes: Beware of over-investing in (and falling in love with) a single idea too early. Interview your bullseye customers about the pros and cons of three distinct value props. 🏆 Make it a team sport: Watching and debriefing all of the customer interviews as a team boosts alignment and momentum. After five interviews, we use a Google Form to capture each person’s big takeaways. And there’s no need to write a report! You can check out the lightning lesson for free here: https://maven.com/p/eb4715. This was my first talk on this subject, so let me know how I can improve it for next time, or what questions you have about the process! Thanks for your support, Gagan Biyani, Chelsea Wilson and Mickey Slevin!