Stop doing so many customer interviews
Ok, hot take here: I think that some entrepreneurs do too many customer interviews. Don’t get me wrong, I love customer interviews and believe they are absolutely critical to validating any idea, BUT that doesn’t mean that more is always better.
I often talk to entrepreneurs who immediately tell me the number of customers they talked to and see a high number as the ultimate accomplishment. Their Cliff Notes version of the Lean Start-up method is “talk to 100 people", full stop. Within reason, a great validation strategy is about quality, not just quantity. Here’s what I think quality means:
Be deliberate about who you are talking to
Define your target customer and ensure that the people you are talking to fit within this target. Getting to your target might be hard (and that’s something you should be reflecting on!), but don’t compromise and just talk to the people who are easiest to reach (ahem, love your Mom, is she your customer?)
Be deliberate about what you seek to learn from your customer interviews
Have a super specific goal in mind for your interviews. There’s certainly a time early in the process for more wide open, exploratory conversations, but as you progress, you should have particular assumptions that you are trying to validate in the conversation. This will help you know when you can move on. When you feel confident that you have validated (or invalidated) the assumption you are testing, that’s when you pause to regroup and move forward.
Be deliberate about the questions that you ask and how you ask them
The classic mistake in customer interviews: mistaking positive feedback on a product in an interview for willingness to pay. No one wants to hurt your feelings, so if you don’t play your cards right, you’re going to get a lot of false positives in your interviews. There’s a ton of interview tactics that will help you get really high quality feedback that you can be confident in - more on that later!
After a critical mass of interviews, reflect on your learnings and iterate
Your twentieth interview should likely not look identical to your first. Instead of just plowing ahead, pause frequently, reflect on what you’re learning, and continually iterate. Lose the questions that aren’t giving you meaningful feedback, add new questions that dig deeper into areas of uncertainty, and try out new tactics when you have the opportunity.
Use customer interviews as one strategy among others
Customer interviews are an amazing and totally critical foundation for your learning. But foundations are made to build on. My favorite tactic that I think is too often overlooked: interview industry experts to learn from their experience. Depending on your learning goals, you might also be ready to start building and testing an MVP (minimum viable product) with potential customers and learning from their interactions.
