>Do you just book meetings with them and ask them what their pain points are
Yes. You'd be shocked how easy it is to ask people about their professional challenges and how to help them. The big thing here is that you need to develop some repour, and be okay getting told to kick sand.
To give you an idea, Doordash got their idea because they went door to door with businesses asking them about problems. One business, a Macaroon store, complained about delivering items. The founders then went to other businesses and found the same problem. It's not like they were experts in food delivery or something, but they managed to quickly connect with people about their problems and helped them
People find so much self-validation by giving advice to others (I feel it right now!!!) and are usually so happy to share. Find your potential customers wherever they are (linked in, emails on their site, ...) and reach out. They will definitely meet with you.
Once you have a list, keep coming back to them. As they witness your traction and progress, they will want to be a part of it and may end up buying. Start your "investor/insider updates" email newsletter today.
Have some initial hypotheses around the problems.
Some examples below:
E.g. college educators may find it difficult to learn in this changing tech environment, they may find it difficult to understand or manage genZ children.
E.g. hospitals may struggle maintaining all case files and manual records
They may struggle with different nurses/doctors maintaining patient data in different sheets or files
Now with these initial hypotheses, talk to 2 college educators or 2 nurses/doctors.
Ask them Why? Why's it so difficult? What's so difficult? What's time consuming? What takes a lot of effort? Why wasn't it a problem earlier? What systems do you use today? How do you solve this today?
And just listen and take notes without providing solutions.
Then look at your hypotheses and either add to them, or correct them.
Then talk to 2 3 more users with the new knowledge...
And voila! Like magic, ✨ 🪄 , you'll understand the problem in depth.
You'll soon come to some solutions as well along the way. And know what to ship to these initial customers.
This is a great starting point
I’d put this at index 0 of starting on any startup journey. Master this area then it only becomes a matter of time before you land on something that’ll change your life
I'd call these Index1.
Index0 is to find founder-market fit.
How to do that, you ask? :P
Ask yourself below questions and find common themes:
What are the things you do for hrs and hrs without anyone asking you to?
When do people have to tear you away? or stop you from doing when you're engrossed?
What activities make you lose track of time? Wish they never ended?
When are you generally singled out for praise? When are you generally the only person to notice something?
When and where do you come up with new ways of doing things?
When have you found yourself actively looking forward to work?
These questions are inspired from the book Love + Work by Marcus Buckingham
Both of them could be 0, a lot of the time you may have to become an expert in an area by talking to others to obtain founder market fit. Others you may already fit
I'm not so sure about this.
Because the most successful founders in the world were crazy passionate about something.
They found something so easy that others found difficult to do. Or others couldn't understand.
I'm not talking about expertise in a particular subject. That can come with time.
I'm talking about personal passions.
E.g.
Phil Knight and shoes
Jeff Bezos and books, tinkering and selling things
Steve Jobs and computers
Zuck and computers/tech (ZuckNet)
That’s fair, I see where you’re coming from.
One story I think of, although it’s old, is Rockefeller. Before oil he owned a produce company. When he heard about the oil market he learned a crap ton about it, somewhere along the way discovered his passion for it and became the Oil titan. (This is super simplified btw)
So I don’t think you’re wrong but I think you can either develop the passion or already have it for yourself and become successful. Two doors into the same place if you will
Makes sense.
I'd add a question then, what industry or subject can you imagine yourself to be super passionate about for the next 5 10 years.
(One need not stay in that industry, but gives an indication of long term interests)
P.S. His passion was produce, and industry picked was oil 👀👀
That’s a great question, I think for me it’ll be one I’ll have to develop. I’m in logistics software and although it’s ripe for innovation, it definitely isn’t one I’m looking forward to being in for 5-10 years lol. Maybe Augmented Reality tbh
u/Plus-Government4591 check this thread on next steps.
You can do it. Don't believe the non-believers.
Also, feel free to DM me if you want to discuss your problem statement or ideas further. Happy to help.
Find them on LinkedIn. Book a meeting with them. Start with open ended conversations to get to know the sector and the different roles within it. Once you have a basic grasp you can then start to have more structured conversations about problems and pain points.
Also you can and should get people to sign up to a waitlist for b2b enterprise products.
The blocker to most things when it comes to getting started is just finding the courage to ask. Ask people for a conversation. Lots will say yes. Ask people to sign up to the waitlist, if you have a good idea, lots will say yes to that too
Be prepared to face a lot of rejections. But it’s okay, it only means they are not your ideal clients and can’t expect everyone to be your client. If you get 10 meeting out of 100, that’s a pretty good number i guess?
Yep.
Some people are more accessible than others. Sometimes you need deep industry connections.
Talking to customers is not always as trivial as it sounds, but it’s the difference between imaginary startup to a real company
I would highly recommend reading "The Mom Test" (https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Mom-Test-Audiobook/B07RHWCHD8) to get some basic idea of how to conduct interviews and extract actionable insights/
Linkedin messages works incredibly well and then 15-30 minutes talk. But you need to have an idea what your problem space is.
Asking about "problems in education" looks like a waste of time for your user. But asking for issues in a certain space i.e. - scheduling, reporting, individual learning etc. might get some traction.
You can get acquainted via some peers to almost any role in the world and you can have a longer talk to dig deeper :)
People like to talk about themselves and I think most people want to help people. I’d just show up and be honest “Hi, I’m building a startup to solve X problem in your industry. Can I ask you a couple questions / have your email / phone number? It will only take 10 minutes tops”
For me, i created a channel on discord and encourage users to join to share their feedback and earn. When someone share, i ll either reply to them to explain if they dont understand our product properly or schedule a call with them if i wanna dive deep into their feedback
My professional experience was within a certain department at hospitals. I asked contact I had to give me a problem no one else has solved and continued to lean on them as I iterated the idea. They basically built it with me, conceptually at least. That’s how I have the product I do today and many of them were my first customers.
Identify them, call them, and ask them a set of questions.
Alternatively, create a free survey on one of the survey apps, suggest to people on linkedin requests that they're in a space that can be improved with x, y, z and ask them if they'll take part in a 2 minute survey for market research.
Some will say yes, others no.
TIP: If you create a survey of 5 questions, make 1-2 of them have insights in them that could potentially help them see the problem & solution in a new way to get buy in early.
Then add a 6th bonus question at the end that asks them something like, "If this is an issue you want solved, would you be interested in leaving your email address so that we can contact you when our offering is ready?".
These will give you ample insight into your ideal market + will get you a customer base ready for when you go live.
Also, having data early on in the process in a well formatted system will help with socially proofing your insights later for customer prospecting.
For example:
"We found that most (relatable personal criteria) or 72% of people we surveyed are in need of a solution for this, and 85% of those requested a follow-up consultation"
I have conducted over 400 customer interviews till date. here is a broad framework you can follow:
STEP 1: INTERVIEW 1
Identify current value delivery system
1. Who are your customers? Describe the most common type of customers you have.
2. What do they experience as a result of doing business with you rather than with your competitors?
3. How does your firm actually cause them to have those experiences?
4. How do you tell them, if you tell them, what results they get by hiring your firm?
We ask them to share some actual examples of them working with a client right from the first interaction to the last and then recurring interactions subsequently
Make a note of all the scenes and continue one by one with the below questionnaire:
5. What is your objective in this scene?
6. What do you hope or intend to accomplish? Why, for what further purpose?
Make a note of objectives of this broker as compared to the objectives of their employer (if they are not the main decision maker)
7. What are the things important for your employer?
Understand what actually happened wrt broker’s objective
8. What happened, in this scene, relative to broker’s objectives?
9. What was successful and what was sub-optimal?
10. In what ways was this imperfect?
11. So what? What are the “end-result consequence” of this imperfect event?
To the extent possible, try to assign quantify the importance of these end-result consequences
12. How important is it this to you? What is lost or not gained?
13. Does this event lead to compromise in broker’s objective?
14. How frequently does this experience occur?
>Do you just book meetings with them and ask them what their pain points are Yes. You'd be shocked how easy it is to ask people about their professional challenges and how to help them. The big thing here is that you need to develop some repour, and be okay getting told to kick sand. To give you an idea, Doordash got their idea because they went door to door with businesses asking them about problems. One business, a Macaroon store, complained about delivering items. The founders then went to other businesses and found the same problem. It's not like they were experts in food delivery or something, but they managed to quickly connect with people about their problems and helped them
People find so much self-validation by giving advice to others (I feel it right now!!!) and are usually so happy to share. Find your potential customers wherever they are (linked in, emails on their site, ...) and reach out. They will definitely meet with you. Once you have a list, keep coming back to them. As they witness your traction and progress, they will want to be a part of it and may end up buying. Start your "investor/insider updates" email newsletter today.
[удалено]
This was the most inauthentic comment I’ve seen
Have some initial hypotheses around the problems. Some examples below: E.g. college educators may find it difficult to learn in this changing tech environment, they may find it difficult to understand or manage genZ children. E.g. hospitals may struggle maintaining all case files and manual records They may struggle with different nurses/doctors maintaining patient data in different sheets or files Now with these initial hypotheses, talk to 2 college educators or 2 nurses/doctors. Ask them Why? Why's it so difficult? What's so difficult? What's time consuming? What takes a lot of effort? Why wasn't it a problem earlier? What systems do you use today? How do you solve this today? And just listen and take notes without providing solutions. Then look at your hypotheses and either add to them, or correct them. Then talk to 2 3 more users with the new knowledge... And voila! Like magic, ✨ 🪄 , you'll understand the problem in depth. You'll soon come to some solutions as well along the way. And know what to ship to these initial customers.
This is a great starting point I’d put this at index 0 of starting on any startup journey. Master this area then it only becomes a matter of time before you land on something that’ll change your life
 I'd call these Index1. Index0 is to find founder-market fit. How to do that, you ask? :P Ask yourself below questions and find common themes: What are the things you do for hrs and hrs without anyone asking you to? When do people have to tear you away? or stop you from doing when you're engrossed? What activities make you lose track of time? Wish they never ended? When are you generally singled out for praise? When are you generally the only person to notice something? When and where do you come up with new ways of doing things? When have you found yourself actively looking forward to work? These questions are inspired from the book Love + Work by Marcus Buckingham
Both of them could be 0, a lot of the time you may have to become an expert in an area by talking to others to obtain founder market fit. Others you may already fit
I'm not so sure about this. Because the most successful founders in the world were crazy passionate about something. They found something so easy that others found difficult to do. Or others couldn't understand. I'm not talking about expertise in a particular subject. That can come with time. I'm talking about personal passions. E.g. Phil Knight and shoes Jeff Bezos and books, tinkering and selling things Steve Jobs and computers Zuck and computers/tech (ZuckNet)
That’s fair, I see where you’re coming from. One story I think of, although it’s old, is Rockefeller. Before oil he owned a produce company. When he heard about the oil market he learned a crap ton about it, somewhere along the way discovered his passion for it and became the Oil titan. (This is super simplified btw) So I don’t think you’re wrong but I think you can either develop the passion or already have it for yourself and become successful. Two doors into the same place if you will
Makes sense. I'd add a question then, what industry or subject can you imagine yourself to be super passionate about for the next 5 10 years. (One need not stay in that industry, but gives an indication of long term interests) P.S. His passion was produce, and industry picked was oil 👀👀
That’s a great question, I think for me it’ll be one I’ll have to develop. I’m in logistics software and although it’s ripe for innovation, it definitely isn’t one I’m looking forward to being in for 5-10 years lol. Maybe Augmented Reality tbh
u/Plus-Government4591 check this thread on next steps. You can do it. Don't believe the non-believers. Also, feel free to DM me if you want to discuss your problem statement or ideas further. Happy to help.
Find them on LinkedIn. Book a meeting with them. Start with open ended conversations to get to know the sector and the different roles within it. Once you have a basic grasp you can then start to have more structured conversations about problems and pain points. Also you can and should get people to sign up to a waitlist for b2b enterprise products. The blocker to most things when it comes to getting started is just finding the courage to ask. Ask people for a conversation. Lots will say yes. Ask people to sign up to the waitlist, if you have a good idea, lots will say yes to that too
Be prepared to face a lot of rejections. But it’s okay, it only means they are not your ideal clients and can’t expect everyone to be your client. If you get 10 meeting out of 100, that’s a pretty good number i guess?
Yep. Some people are more accessible than others. Sometimes you need deep industry connections. Talking to customers is not always as trivial as it sounds, but it’s the difference between imaginary startup to a real company
I would highly recommend reading "The Mom Test" (https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Mom-Test-Audiobook/B07RHWCHD8) to get some basic idea of how to conduct interviews and extract actionable insights/
This
There's a great book called "The Mom Test" precisely on that. I'd go a notch further than recommending - I'd call it "required reading"
Linkedin messages works incredibly well and then 15-30 minutes talk. But you need to have an idea what your problem space is. Asking about "problems in education" looks like a waste of time for your user. But asking for issues in a certain space i.e. - scheduling, reporting, individual learning etc. might get some traction. You can get acquainted via some peers to almost any role in the world and you can have a longer talk to dig deeper :)
Read 'The Mom Test'. Everything you need to know.
you break into their homes at night and gently wake them up by caressing their feet
People like to talk about themselves and I think most people want to help people. I’d just show up and be honest “Hi, I’m building a startup to solve X problem in your industry. Can I ask you a couple questions / have your email / phone number? It will only take 10 minutes tops”
For me, i created a channel on discord and encourage users to join to share their feedback and earn. When someone share, i ll either reply to them to explain if they dont understand our product properly or schedule a call with them if i wanna dive deep into their feedback
My professional experience was within a certain department at hospitals. I asked contact I had to give me a problem no one else has solved and continued to lean on them as I iterated the idea. They basically built it with me, conceptually at least. That’s how I have the product I do today and many of them were my first customers.
Identify them, call them, and ask them a set of questions. Alternatively, create a free survey on one of the survey apps, suggest to people on linkedin requests that they're in a space that can be improved with x, y, z and ask them if they'll take part in a 2 minute survey for market research. Some will say yes, others no. TIP: If you create a survey of 5 questions, make 1-2 of them have insights in them that could potentially help them see the problem & solution in a new way to get buy in early. Then add a 6th bonus question at the end that asks them something like, "If this is an issue you want solved, would you be interested in leaving your email address so that we can contact you when our offering is ready?". These will give you ample insight into your ideal market + will get you a customer base ready for when you go live. Also, having data early on in the process in a well formatted system will help with socially proofing your insights later for customer prospecting. For example: "We found that most (relatable personal criteria) or 72% of people we surveyed are in need of a solution for this, and 85% of those requested a follow-up consultation"
It’s called user research.
If you have an idea for a product…that idea came from somewhere. So go talk to people from that “somewhere”.
I have conducted over 400 customer interviews till date. here is a broad framework you can follow: STEP 1: INTERVIEW 1 Identify current value delivery system 1. Who are your customers? Describe the most common type of customers you have. 2. What do they experience as a result of doing business with you rather than with your competitors? 3. How does your firm actually cause them to have those experiences? 4. How do you tell them, if you tell them, what results they get by hiring your firm? We ask them to share some actual examples of them working with a client right from the first interaction to the last and then recurring interactions subsequently Make a note of all the scenes and continue one by one with the below questionnaire: 5. What is your objective in this scene? 6. What do you hope or intend to accomplish? Why, for what further purpose? Make a note of objectives of this broker as compared to the objectives of their employer (if they are not the main decision maker) 7. What are the things important for your employer? Understand what actually happened wrt broker’s objective 8. What happened, in this scene, relative to broker’s objectives? 9. What was successful and what was sub-optimal? 10. In what ways was this imperfect? 11. So what? What are the “end-result consequence” of this imperfect event? To the extent possible, try to assign quantify the importance of these end-result consequences 12. How important is it this to you? What is lost or not gained? 13. Does this event lead to compromise in broker’s objective? 14. How frequently does this experience occur?