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cover of episode Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures)

Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures)

2024/12/1
logo of podcast Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

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L
Lenny Rachitsky
曾任Airbnb产品领袖,Localmind联合创始人和CEO,著名产品管理博客和播客作者。
M
Michael Margolis
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@Michael Margolis 阐述了如何在一个为期一天的“目标客户冲刺”中识别出最有可能采用公司产品或服务的特定目标客户群体。他强调了缩小目标市场的重要性,并详细介绍了如何通过高质量的客户访谈、原型比较和团队协作来快速有效地收集客户反馈。他还分享了在招募目标客户、设计原型以及进行访谈时的技巧和策略,并解释了如何利用“观察会”方法来提高团队效率和一致性。 Michael Margolis 还讨论了在进行目标客户研究时常见的误区,例如:目标客户范围不够窄、过度依赖客户对未来行为的预测,以及确认偏差。他建议团队成员应更加重视客户过去的经验,并保持客观的态度来评估研究结果。他还分享了在生物技术领域应用该方法的经验,并鼓励听众分享他们使用该方法的经验和反馈。 @Lenny Rachitsky 主要负责引导访谈,并就目标客户的概念、与理想客户画像 (ICP) 的区别以及在产品开发不同阶段应用该方法的时机等方面提出了问题。他还分享了一些成功案例,并与 Michael Margolis 讨论了如何避免常见的误区,以及如何更好地利用该方法来提高产品开发效率和成功率。

Deep Dive

Chapters
The concept of a Bullseye Customer is introduced as the specific subset of the target market most likely to adopt a product or service. The importance of focusing on this narrow group is discussed, emphasizing the benefits of deep understanding, prioritization, and team alignment.
  • Bullseye Customer is a very specific subset of the target market.
  • Focusing on the Bullseye Customer helps prioritize feedback and streamline product development.
  • Team alignment is crucial for effective product building.

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
中文

You have done thirty years of work and iteration and refinement. You're here just to tell us. Here's the most important thing you need to know. Here's I had to do IT face. And all that time I think I understand where is the boss.

I customer, every ambitious founder wants to build a product for everybody, but IT doesn't start. Amazon started to selling books or facebook was just profiles for college students so abuzz. Customer is the very specific subset of your target market who initially is most likely to adopt your product service.

Why this? Of all things that you can focus on of a start of journey.

IT helps you get really deep and understanding who are those people and understanding what they need. IT helps you prioritize the feedback you're getting and IT just gets everybody as a team much more aligned. And what are we doing and what are we doing? First.

we have the bulls like customer sprint that your book describes. You basically give people plan for how to figure this out in day, which sounds .

like a dream. And five bozzi customers and three very simple prototypes. And then we conduct those interviews in one day while the whole team is watching and debriefing and of thinking about what are the key big taking.

Today my guest is Michael margolis. Michael has been A U. X. Researcher at google ventures for almost fifteen years. Where is work with over three hundred companies to help them get on stuck, move faster and build something that people want.

He helps developed the design spring method made famous by the bookstore int more recently, rote a book, or learn more faster how to find your bodza e customer and their perfect product, which essentially helps you identify and refine your ideal customer profile in a single day. I've said many times on the spot cast that one of the biggest mistakes founders make and products mes make is not being very clear and very narrow with their initial target market. And i've been looking for a book and a guide to help people figure this out.

This book is that and also this book is completely free, unavailable online. As a PDF, Michael is not looking to help books or drive leads to google ventures. He generally simply wants people to avoid pain and avoid wasting time building something that nobody needs.

In this episode, we go step by step for how to identify your bodye customer had interview people, how to recruit people and how to to refine your idea to build something that people actually want. The episode is both for founders and also for product teams of larger companies who want to avoid building something that nobody cares about if you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and folding your favorite podcasting, APP or youtube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and that helps the podcast tremendously. Ly, with that, I bring Michael mark goalless. Michael, thank you so much for binger, and welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much. I'm through the bigger.

So we're going to be going really, really deep on how to very clearly and also just very quickly identify your buddhi customer, which some people referred to as idea of customer profile icp. There's differences that we get in touch on that. But you rote a whole book about this, a very specific topic I have IT right here.

It's called learn more faster and the subtitle important, how to find your boys. I customer find their perfect products. And interestingly, this topic is actually come up a bunch of recent podcast episode.

So i've been like telling us we're going to have a whole podcast episode de about this very specific topic i'm very excited about. So my call again. Thank you for being here.

Thank you time.

This episode de is brought to you by apple. Apple is the next generation A B testing in future management platform built by alarms of airing bean snowflake for modern growth teams. Companies like twitch, miro, click up and draft kings relying up o to power their experiment. Experimenting is increasingly essential for driving growth and for understanding the performance of new features. And apple helps you increase experimental velocity while unlock king rigorous deeper analysis in a way that no other commercial tool does.

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I want to a start with giving a chance to share the work that you have done over your career that this framework and process is didn't because it's based on a lot of hands on work with startups and founders. So just talk about the work that you have done that has LED you to this process in frame, mark? yeah.

So i've been doing this kind product in new x work for over thirty years. So the work that i'm going to describe here as kind of the combination of the synthesis, about thirty plus years of that. And so there a lot of different pieces that I picked up along the way and recombined and adapted for this.

So started out studying anthropic. My first job was working in educational software as an editor so was kind of introducing the U X. My introduction to use ability testing and went from there to uh working at a boutique product design innovation uh studio.

So basically consulting with big companies like alcoa and do pot and erickson. So learning really deep ethnographic research techniques, very big long expensive projects, consulting projects um and then from nari went to walmart 点 com。 So going from there to walmart dot com was really learning to take those and compressed them and accelerate them.

One is really all about execution, about scale, about everyday low cost and speed. And so I had to really congress those techniques and make them much, much faster and learn to combine deep ethnographic discovery work with the ability work and getting a lots of lots of grams. From there I went to google.

So I was embed in the gmail team early on two thousand and six. And so what we did there was then combining these also at scale, doing this kind of innovation at speed. You can see kind of this trend of getting faster and faster.

One of the things we did a lot there was the way I would do the research is with watch parties. So teams would be able to see IT. Google had had invested lots of video conferencing streaming from the labs one way mirrors a lot of things early on.

So the teams were involved in, they were seeing and watching this year. So a lot of those techniques I brought them to uh G V to google ventures when I joined in twenty ten. So I was the first um U X research partner in venture capital um at the time, still maybe is one of the person in this role.

And so took a lot of those techniques and recombine them and have adapted them and experimented over last fourteen years working with hundreds of different kinds of startup. So we have a very broad variety of founders and product people that we're working with. So over the past two years, where you really experiment got into experiment and got to work with them and be kind of a small piece of a journey that they're on to learn and answer these fundamental questions that they have about their products and their people.

How many companies such founders have you work at this point? Just give people .

a sense of the scale is hundreds. So i've conducted at this point over three hundred hands on research springs with them. Um so we also work with many, many others where we're just doing tons of office hours. And so it's everything from just to give you a sense as anything from biotech to health care to security food, I worked with farmers. You know it's it's really all over the place when .

I love about this podcast and guests like you is you have done thirty years of work uh and iteration and refinement and then you're here just to tell us, here's every here's the most important thing you need to know, here's how to do IT. And all the time I spent perfect what are what are I we are providing here. Okay, so your book in your processes about finding a boss I customer tell how is understand was a bold's ye customer and in particular how is there any difference from how most people think of the I C P. Ideal customer profile?

So buzz customer is the very specific subset of your target market who initially is most likely to adopt product service. And so compared to when we talk to founders about their icp or the personals that they come with, this tends to be more specific even than I usually have gotten in the reason that this this concept of buza customers become so important as as we've seen, this is really key to accelerating teams.

So everybody, every ambitious sound wants to build a product for everybody and where we're investors. So A G, V, A, we want them to be successful and to have these huge markets. But IT doesn't start there.

So to build the successfully usually have to be much more focused, much more specific. So you can look at lots of companies, right? Amazon started just selling books or facebook was just profiles for college students.

And so helping founders be very specific about who are you, you gonna start with who is the that very distinct group that is most likely initially to adopt and helps streamline a huge number of things. So IT helps you prioritize, what are you building? IT helps you get really deep and understanding who are those people and understanding what they need.

IT helps you prioritize the feedback you're getting. You're often getting just a tone of input from investors, from friends and family if you're talking to them from a lots of people who kind of seem like they're in your target market. But IT helps you kind of win a away.

Some of that stuff like which which parts of this are important will get to you. It's not that we're not going to eventually serve you, but initially, here's where we're going to focus. And IT just gets everybody a as a team, much more alien. And what are we doing and and what are we doing first?

I love that the incentives, as you just referred to, of a, of a VC like google ventures, are so lined with help figure out what most will help a start up like I love that this is a good filter for what have you seen most cost trouble for early stage start up? And it's interesting that this is where you ended up going. So let me actually let's spend a little more time here. And just like why the boli customer slash icp is so important, why is this the thing of all the things that you guys have seen along the early stage of a start up journey? You have decided this is where we need to focus and help people.

Having them focus on the bozzi customer is a way to help them focus and prioritize what they're thinking about building, what the questions are that they are asking and who IT is that they need to target and build for. Um and so all of those things, once we can help them narrow that down and decide who are we really focused on and who are we setting aside until later, IT helps helps them prioritize the road map that helps them prioritize the feedback they're getting and gets the whole team aligned um and moving together much faster yeah make sense.

Basically, everything trickles down from who the hacker is selling to cause it's the pains you're selling for them, how to find them. So I love that, and I totally agree. And again, this has come up a bunch on recent podcast despises visually help essential. This isn't how underappreciated this often is.

The other thing I love about what you're describing as you're focused on speed, like I love that you're as you move through your career s like how do we do this faster and faster and would especially love about your approach is that a you basically did people, uh, plan for how to figure this out in a day, which sounds like a dream. What a dream come true in a day you can change the trajectory of your started by. Getting very clear on who you're selling to and your both like customer awesome.

okay. So let's not getting into so described the sprint. So you have this boys I customer sprint that your book describes.

And by the way, this book is freely available. You can delay the PDF or not join self books here. This is just like use this. You'll you'll be Better off .

yeah there's learn more faster at com. There's the book. There's all kinds of resources and spirit in and templates yeah please grab IT.

Okay call. So described the spring high level, how it's laid out in the kind of the core pieces of IT.

Yeah so the basic formula, the way I think about IT is is five and three and one so it's five bozyk customers and three very simple prototypes and then we conduct those interviews in one day um while the whole team is watching and debrief ing and kind of thinking about what are the key big takeaway um uh at the end of that and so that all um as a team and .

you mentioned a few of these kind of king ingredients and I think things that people may be surprised about specifically, you don't need to talk to a ton of potential customers. You build a number of prototypes, which is interesting versus like IT a rating on a single prototype. There's a few other elements so can just share some of like the key insights, the key unique ingredients to the restaurant.

So one is both side customer. So we talked about that, right? So again, bolz I customer, is that very specific subset of your target market who is initially most likely to adopt product service? So we want to recruit that group of people. And one of the reasons that we do that is that the whole team is an agreement.

I have five people who matched ed that in every like a of those people, those are the ones that if they saw this, we're pretty sure like they be into this theyd want this like we're all we agree. So that way after we do the interviews, depending on what the feedback is, they can't really dismiss IT like, but we all thought that and it's fine if I didn't if they would didn't want IT and or they reacted in certain ways that we want to learn. But up front, we were able to like identifying say yes, yes, those really we think are the right people.

That's our hypothesis. So first is five buli customers. The next part is about um quality tail interviews. So there are a lots and lots of different kinds of research methods. But what I found over doing this for many years is that the biggest bang for your book is doing these kind of deep quality taking interviews where I can dig in and understand people's aries, understand their motivations, understand past experiences.

Why did you do this in the past? What have you done in the past? What's work? What hasn't work? And having the whole team watched that, and understand and build that kind of empathy and understanding, and here those stories is very powerful.

But then we do those in small batches. So rather than do an interviewer on monday and then one on wednesday and then a couple on friday, we cmp them. So ideally, it's in that one day.

So I banging out five interviews, one hour interviews in one day, while the whole teams watching. Sometimes we do IT across two days, depending on time zones and things like that. But the idea that they're clump ed together.

And the reason for that is if you do them in a complex, that then the patterns are just much more obvious after the end of the day. Is this really clear what we're the big takeo is, is not going to answer every question that you ever had about your product to your customers. But the big things that you set out to answer, it's pretty clear like that IT worked did did not work, which parts were good or bad, all these kinds of things.

And the whole team has watched IT. And so they have that sense and that idea of just doing five of them. You hit t what's called data saturation.

And so this is a thing in quality tail research and where the kind of the the the common version of this is everybody after four or five was I forgot six. Please don't let me sit through anymore these like I get IT i'm hearing the same things over and over. I understand like let's let's move on and do something different change, change the customer, change the prototypes, whatever.

So qualified interviews in small club and then we compare prototypes. Um and so this kind of comes from that time I had a walmart where I sort of see the whole world as a shopping process. And so there is something very valuable just the way any of you have shopped for anything, right? You don't look at just one thing.

If I showed you just one thing, you'd have some feedback and you'd have an opinion about, like let's shop for a couch. I like the color, the Christians are uncomfortable. I like the fabric or not. And that's helpful, and it's interesting to hear.

But as you start looking at two or three and you start having this different as reference points and and when you are testing with customers is not up to them to come up with these different possibilities of what could be. And so if i'm presenting those, you like, oh, that's issuing. So I like the way this one has cushions that are made out of down, but this other one is really interest because they deliver IT over this.

I like this because it's a style that I like, and they actually take away my old couch, right? So then I can like comparing contrast across these different possibilities. These are different distinct value propositions.

And i'm not looking for a winner. But this comparison, the other big benefit of having multiple prototypes is IT helped teams avoid getting two wed to one specific idea. And so you can get a little over committed.

There's a risk that you get over committed to one idea you're polishing that you're working on IT. You're too committed to that. And this pushes teams to think of new different possibilities.

And you can be a little bit more neutral, little bit more objective if you're not also bought into one thing. So comparing prototypes becomes very powerful. And then the other thing is making this a team sport.

So um the watch parties are a key example of this. So i'm conducting these interviews and the whole team is and i'm life streaming IT. So the whole team is all watching IT these days.

Typically people are prety distributed, so i'm doing IT over zoom and they're watching the live stream independently. And then a one of my partner, so keep around AIDS or Venus, it's amazing. Design partners I get to work with are often facilitating kind of that back room.

And so what they're doing is they're helping the team. We have a structure process for taking notes and then in between each interview, they are the breathing. So I have kind of the spread sheet that I used to like these are the key things we wanted to get out of this.

And so there they're going through and just capturing that like what just happened in this interview, like let's make sure we have the high level and at the end of the day, we have a way to kind of all capture like what were our big takeaway, what happened but the magic of all watching IT and and processing IT and discussing IT and debating IT through the course of the day is that everybody is a line. We've all seen IT. I don't write a report.

I haven't written a report and I know ten years because we've at the end when we captured those big takeaway that the team has captured IT, right? Do we end up we do IT through the google for shows up in the spread sheet and we can to discuss IT and then everybodys, just like raring to go to the next thing. And everybody's gn, and there's an incredible amount of momentum from the team after that.

I know like let's go do the next thing, like it's clear what we need to do and what we learned and sometimes the next thing is do this again and adjust so we can build more confidence. Um but the make IT a team sport is is been a very powerful um two of her building consensus, building alignment, especially as teams are growing and people are and to start brunning in different directions. It's like a chance to come together and make sure like where are we?

What are we doing? awesome. That was really helpful. So just to summarize kind of the key elements of the approach, there is a bozeman e customer concept of just like a very narrow uh, eight people wet dream most of who most want this thing and will talk about that make a quality ative versus surveys or things like that, uh, comparing per types and making a teams sport. okay.

So we're going to actually go into more detail of each of these steps. Just the folks can basically what i'm hoping to do is they listen, you both leading to this can do this tomorrow or next week. There's a little prep time before we get into each step. When do you recommend people do this? When in the stage of a journey can you do IT like many times, and he just context .

there before we dive, you can do in many times. The key time to do this is at a high level. It's before hopefully you've invested a lot of time into building something, a lot of energy and um the teams energy and money and that goes into the building.

So it's usually before you build something, maybe if you're expanding into a new group of customers. So you are killing IT in the U. K. And you're trying to get into the U. S.

Market and that different or you worry it's different or you're not sure it's a good time to check um or maybe you were selling to enterprise, you're doing very like weight of high touch sales to enterprise and now your your going to shift down to maybe a different teer of customers. You are trying to set up some more of a self serve kind of uh, sales motion. You need to understand that another commit time is when you're selling, but it's like not something he's not going quite as well as.

Maybe you hope that, that was going. You very launched and you want to you wanted just kind of troubleshoot like what's going on. We clearly this is we have some traction maybe, but it's not what we wanted or we're getting that kind of very polite encourage feedback, which is kind of all sounds good, but it's really no um let's go dive in and find out. So those are kind of the big key things at the times of going to do IT.

Okay, let's actually get into the steps. Uh, I believe there there's six kind of core steps to the process. O okay, what's how ready? Start what? Step one.

Yeah so step one is what I do is I plan um about a forty five minute meeting with the team. Um so again, it's really important to have that court team together and have this conversation about what are the key questions. Basically, what do you wish you could you would know about your product, about your customers, what's what's getting in the way, one of the most common ways that we asked this is basically what keeps you up at night because founders and product people have there's a brazilian things that there kind of bubbling in their head, they're worrying about. But that often gets them to kind of step back and be like, oh, but i'm really unsure is you know this right what's going to happen?

Like, well, people how will people respond to this fundamental concept, this idea? Or how will they use IT? right? And so that kind of the I I have a set of questions that i'll go through with them to help prompt and illicit.

What are those big things that you wish you know right? What what would have to be true for this to succeed, right? Um what are you kind of your hypotheses and what are your assumptions about the product, about the customer? Know who do you think this is or not and why? Uh kind of what are those nagging debates on the team, those kinds of things that keep coming up over and over and like over god six, let's go get some information and answer the question right? So with some of these things, so we we have that initial meeting to kind of detail like what do we need to answer?

awesome. And this informs others. I imagine all the things you do next.

And so in the P, D, F, link to in the show notes, you can see all these questions and run through them in yourself. Okay, cool. So step on what's step to.

So step two is based on what you want to learn. Now let's figure out who is the bulls I customer that we need to talk to, to answer that question. And and IT all starts with those key questions that you have. Because if the question is about, let's say, big questions about on boarding, well, the questions about on boarding flow, then you're gonna to talk to new customers, somebody who's fresh to this to see how do they get through or how do they understand what this is. Um where's if you're talking about something that's a new feature that already in your product, then you know you would be talking to existing customer.

So that's an example where if I if I understand what the questions are, I can kind of work backwards um to understand who do I need to talk to and then based on that, once what I do is run what I call a bulls, I exercise. So it's again sensually another kind of interview. Get the team together and we I pepper them with a lot of questions to figure out like exactly who is this post I customer that we've been talking about.

And the reason this is I love doing this as as a team is that what happens invariably is, is having that conversation before we've have been gotten to any interviews is super clarifying for a team because they tend to get a short hand about who their customers are. And this is a way. And I just keep asking questions like what do you mean by that? right?

So when you say you're building a delivery service for people who get a specially medications delivered, especially prescription medications, like who exactly is that right? It's not everybody like and so we started narrowing down. So they start having those conversations, debates, arguments about who IT is and just having that is really clarifying for the team like, oh, well, hadn't thought about that.

Yeah I guess it's true. Maybe it's not everybody who has that. The only people who have this kind of condition or this set of conditions are these needs.

And to follow that real quick, imagine people's natural inclined is not to narrow IT too much because there's always like why would we exclude this big market Operations? Like why I always have to be like so narrow? You just speak a little bit just like why it's so important to get very, very narrow. Someone once described andy Jones on a news letter post I write once he described as IT should feel comically narrow that recent I love that ah I don't .

know that phrase but I love that yeah um comically narrow is that good to is and there are times that teams i'll just like or forgot six margo was like just like this is too much.

The reason that I do that is i'm pushing them to identify a person who they all would agree this person if if we present this value prop that we think we're gonna build and this problem we think we're solving, we are all convinced or or it's our best guess like it's fine if you're not sure, but we are pretty convinced of that the person who will say, yeah I mean, like I need this thing and so it's a way i'm kind of running an experiment, right? So it's a way to reduce variables for me um and then to get that specific. And then I recruit a bunch of the people who match that very particular characteristics set of characteristics and there's still their people.

So there's still some variation, but it's a way for us to to test that, right? And if there's too much variation, then what happens at the end of the day, you're like, I was kind of a mush like I I am not really sure what would we learned was IT because I was just people had mixed feelings. There was IT because there was just not enough consistency like we have too many variables. I don't know what we learned here.

So I think it's nice about this. Is this list this initial list you're making of both I potential customers and attributes is not exactly gonna here who you go after once you figure this out, if you want to be very confident, this group solutions love what you're presenting because you're trying to learn as much as you can from the people that most love IT. And then from that, you can get a little less narrow textually picture product right?

And and most often what happens is we do this. We define IT our best, right? It's it's our hypothesis is our best guess.

The team is always very expert. I'm not right. I'm always showing up as the new whatever this businesses. And so the team is expert. And so this is very informed. It's not like word guessing, but we go through this and by the time after we've done these interviews, the goal is to figure out was this right or not or in what ways do we need to adjust like that's the a big piece of the outcome is adJusting that definition of your and often what happens is through the course of that buli customer sprint, you learn a oh IT turns out like there's actually this other distinguishing characteristic we didn't realize or maybe maybe validates what we knew. But often we didn't quite realize that like this other thing is popping up where we're seeing heat from people like, oh, wow, that's something let's dive in a little more. I can walk through an example if .

you want yeah be also yeah yeah and I think even just like what are some examples of attributes like what's the list of attributes should be thinking about?

Let me just give you an example. I think a lot of the stuff were talking started to get a little abb strack. So um I was working with the company that um was developing A A new delivery service for people who have uh specialty prescriptions medications.

So these are the kinds of medications that are expensive and for very like specialized like cchr onic diseases. So this is not the kind of thing you're getting IT ride. Um and so uh and there's something kind of very special about this company that I can mention that afterwards.

But the fundamental thing for the them to figure out was before they can build out the logistics of this, they're trying to figure out like do we need to target something that is for delivery like sap, right? These are really important medications for very serious diseases. Is IT like, all my gosh, I need the next pill.

I get IT to me like as fast as you can. Or is IT like what? I can wait till a day or two, but I need IT between like two and two fifty pm, like if I knew that.

And then who exactly is this posy customer who want to know like what is what's really the fundamental issue or problem that we're solving here until they wanted to to answer those questions. And so we go through this process. And so those are the key questions.

And then the customers that they are after, I know like, okay, well, it's not to be everybody with specialty medications. And so as we start teasing through that and thinking about IT, I want to think about what are examples of other products that somebody has used that would make them more likely. So a good example there is, have you had other things delivered food?

Have you had I gone through this kind of process before where you used like uber? So because if you have never had anything delivered like that before, that's like going to be too many humps to get over to get the person to accept their medications coming by delivery, right? So they're probably used uber eat or or something like that and theyve been on the medication for certain amount time.

So somebody who this is kind of a chronic thing, it's not like a one of acute situation. They needed to find people who had a certain kind of density. So was how rural where they living, how how urban was IT because of the way they were going to do the deliveries, somebody who was responsible for their own medications.

So we don't want somebody who's in some kind of a health care setting where somebody was taking care of that, maybe their spouse or partners of managing their prescriptions. So these are the kinds of things that we're starting to look for with another typical exclusion criteria is I don't want somebody who knows too much. So your your core boli customer, I want somebody who's pretty typical.

So in this case, like if I were to find out that somebody was a pharmacist or worked in healthcare and like, oh yeah, that's probably not like a typical customer. If I just have these five precious interview slots, I probably don't want that. So i'm going to exclude those people.

So we went through and did this and then generated um these different product types to to express kind of a range of different recipes of a value problems of what this might be, right? So the range is things from IT can be delivered in an hour, you know, or IT can be delivered over for our window or I can be delivered. It'll take you know we get IT there as soon as we can get IT there, but we're not quite sure when we become you just have to be home.

And available, right, these kinds of things. So went through this exercise and what what rose to the surface as we are doing these is that there were certain customers for whom this was a much, much bigger issue for whom they needed to be there and know when this thing was showing up. So IT turned out having that distinct window, a narrow window of when a predictable narrow window of when this was gna arrive as much more important than sap.

These are important medications. Do not waiting until, like the last pill is going like that's not what's happening here. But knowing when IT was arriving and IT turned out that the scenarios where that was critical was things like it's a refrigerated medication, this can be sitting out on my step, right? It's cold chain or there's for some reason an issue where i'm especially worried about theft or something like because of what the medication is or where i'm living or whether so there are these very particular scenario.

So then going back to this idea, the bol's I customer realized, oh, wait, so it's a subset of customers who I have like refrigerated mads like that seems like A A much higher value problem that we're solving here. And so we ended up running this again. So we know I really recruit with people who are had of that subset of kinds of medications and issues and also were dissatisfied with the status quote of the existing service.

And we're not available to just kind of be around, right? So they were busy in whatever they needed this window. And so we ran n IT again. You like, oh yeah, there IT is right.

So that second group of people, you just start building this confidence of of, of, in, in, in the match between what you're building, what the problems you're solving and who exactly you're building IT for. And in that case, you could see, oh yeah, that is the right bulli. That's why there's this very narrow, specific group whose much more likely to adopt this than like everybody who has specially medications because the need is just much more acute.

I love this example. Like intuitively IT all just makes sense as you describe what you landed on. And like this is what people call product market fit.

You're describing where somebody has a pain that you are solving and they needed badly. What do you what does that look like when you find that group of? Like, what is? What do you notice equality itai vely. Just like this tells you this is IT. This is the poll that people talk about when you say product market IT.

I avoid the phrase product market fit with this stuff. And we can talk about that because I think that's that's kind of interesting when you find this match. What happens in the quality native interviews is that you can sense the energy and the excitement and the enthusiasm IT comes across um especially as you do a bunch of these, you can tell there's a difference.

And so that's what you're looking for is people who are then start like weight. Is this available? Can I is this a thing like, can I can I sign up for this? Like it's that kind of thing.

They are they're really leaning into IT. And you can just quita's vely can just see IT. One of the things I thought I was very interesting was I was recently speaking to a founder um when i'm doing another round of this with a new set of concept.

We had done a project a while ago and actually killed the project. So through going through buza customer sprint with something that he was doing, we've did three rounds of IT. And finally he was like, yeah, this is not i'm going to focus on the other part of my business.

And he said we killed the project. And what he told me was two things that were really enshrined to me. One was this saves me a huge amount, pain, like we ran through this, like we had to do some work to the bulls, I customer sport.

But the product that he was gona build, IT was hardware. IT was software. IT was this whole subscription.

But like IT was gonna be a big, complicated thing to build. We had mocked up a bunch of prototypes and i'd used some free prototypes. And we interview to like IT killed the project that was super valuable to him. He saved a huge amount of time and effort. The other thing that he's mentioned to me was that through going through the process, he learned what no looked like so he he could see oh like i'm getting kind of this neutral of night positive encouraging feedback and as we did this, he he really is like, oh, that they know they don't want this.

It's not that big of a deal. It's not that.

And and IT was by doing this and you see IT enough times and he felt like that was one of the most valuable outcomes for him, is like now I know what no looks like .

that makes so much sense. Like IT feels like that almost you could always almost argue this. The biggest value of this is just waste, avoid waste time building something nobody .

wants totally. And and as a as a researcher and as A V C, like if I can save a company and a founder, a product team like from going down some path or too far down a path that's huge for everybody, right? They have so much energy to do that. Go to the other thing.

Yeah, yeah. And again, this is, uh, another minder, White, so important to go. So never.

Because if you can't find anyone that is filled, this exists like you're you're in trouble. This is your chance spine the most thrill people the most specifically pained. And if you have, fine that that's a problem .

yeah in in the same way we define as boss I and then when I go recruit and try to find them, if I can't find them, I usually take that as a sign of something.

Also me like I know of these people exist and IT could be sometimes like what we went to narrow like, okay, let's go back and and like we'll see which of these are flexible you know, how do we soft in some of these requirements? But if in fact, I just can't like, I can't find these people, these people that you're imagining exist who want this thing. I do not sure how you're onna sell to them like IT not that i'm like the final arbiters like whether these people exist, but it's something you should go check.

Yeah okay. So to give people a little bit of a framework of how to help them identify these narrow set of attributes, share some of like a list of attributes to think about to help them narrow and how many how many like narrowing attribute would you recommend? Is IT like roughly herstal is like three years at five seven.

It's probably gets down to yes, more like seven rough. I mean that you roughly IT depends um what are .

the way I think about .

that is kind of in these three groups. So there are inclusion criteria, there are exclusion criteria, and then there are what we found very important to trigger. So by inclusion criteria, this is usually pretty easy because the team s like these are the people we want in the group, right? It's people who are taking specially medications for these particular conditions, like we can build that out.

The exclusion criteria, I find, or is, is a place to dill and help the company really think that through a bit more to brainstorm that. Because as we talked about, it's harder for teams to set people aside, right? And so it's thinking about like what are reasons why somebody maybe is not the best customer here, not yet.

And that could be things that we talked about was maybe they have too much expert knowledge here. They're not really a typical person. That's not what I want to talk to. Maybe they are using a competitive product and they are already like locked into that, like I don't need to talk to them or they've had some other personal past experience that's going to just make them not a good candidate like i'm working on fin tech and this person is in bankrupcy has had identity stolen, like I want to help them but that's not like our first place to start.

So these include exclusion, creature are critical and then um these trigger are specific events or situations that somebody y's been in that makes them particularly ready or ripe for the solution. So sometimes the way that looks, sometimes the the examples of that can be you're selling a new cyber security um platform for something and there's a new CS o has come in, you know there's a new sheriff in town and they're looking to revamp things and rethink. And so it's a time when somebody y's open to considering new options or something's gone wrong, right?

Somebody y's in a situation with something's gone sideways and they they need a new solution for that kind of thing this um or we are working for an insurance tech company um and they were targeting millennial. So the idea was the people who are in this particular um demographic and this time of life, they would be building buying life insurance. And what we found was everybody was saying, like what we we should buy life yeah, it's one of things that you should take care that, yeah, you should take care that, oh yeah, I really need to get life insurance but people who the trigger was, oh, you just had a baby or you just got married and now people like, oh, this is actually, I like to do this like, I need to, I need to go get this done and so I mean, a completely different mindset. That's the person who now is your boys. Ee, it's a an example of a trigger that something like like, now I need to go do this .

thing awesome. Uh, I know the jo B2Be don e fra mework to tur n for tha t. That's like the like a kicks off the vector to get them to do something. And like I forget there's a term that rework.

So I have your book up uh in my hands right now and i'm looking at the list of attributes and questions that you ask to help narrow down. So let me just read this because I think I might be half just people to hear like if I tried to narrow, how do we narrow them? So it's like, um are they new an existing user?

Your product, what sector industry are the end? What's the size of the organization? Have they used the competitive product is are disqualifying personal experiences, as you described, as are disqualifying professional experiences.

What's the title, role, responsibility? What's their geography? Or they, the buyer, or they, the end user? Are they distributed as their key m, organized their budget and income, their life and work settings, track events you described, uh, are they V I P? Like what does what does that one a que, yeah.

So um I was having this conversation yesterday with and so what I asked them was what makes one customer another more valuable?

Oh okay, yeah. I got IT. So it's like, are they like, yeah what are they especially important?

Yeah is. Think about was for them IT. Was this really interesting again, kind of way to start thinking about distinction tion characters like yeah what what is a valuable customer to us like where they are?

At early stage, they were attracting a lot of people in different kinds of persons are trying to figure out what's the pattern here, like who matters more? You are not awesome. So you .

basically you answer all these questions you see, which is seven ish attributes seem to be most right. And that's your bills that customer to start with, right? awesome.

okay. Uh, should we move into the next step? sure. Let's tell IT will come next.

So once I have that set of criteria and the team is all aligned and agreed on what that is, no, yeah, those are people. So then I start talking about how I recruit them. So to do that for most people, unless i'm looking for something that's very, very specialized or hard defined, what I do is I create a screener questionnaire. So I translate these criteria into essentially a set of questions that will help me filter out people to know if people respond to this questionnaire who are the bull size in there and so part of the trick there is to write a questionnaire in a way that are not telegraphing the right answers um and so that I kind of in the in the control seats so I can pick out and identify the people.

So what I mean by that is if I were to to say I will pay a hundred twenty five dollars to anybody who, you know, product manager who listens to lenny podcast and offset, i'm going to get a brazilian people who was like, I will take that hundred twenty five dollars like what I don't know, do you actually listen to the pocket? I don't know. Hopefully do everybody does.

But if I can ask the question in a different way in terms of um you know what are some of the podcast you listen to, you know what are the kinds of people you follow these kids of things and then see like where does that show up or even ask IT as an open ended question, right? Like where do you get um your your most trusted information as a product manager and start to see and then be able to pick those people out. Um because what I wanted to do, one of the key things in those balls are um criteria or that they're very concrete and very measurable things.

It's not just of this person is is an active shopper like that's not very helpful to me because I need to translate IT into this questionnaire. So I need to know what does active shopper that means? Somebody who is purchasing certain kind of item, whatever we define three times a week, again, that's that's active, right? So we have some very particular, very measurable concrete things.

And so then i'm writing this questionnaire and typically what I do is I rely pretty heavily actually on user interviews, responses, another one of these kind of services um so I can post that questionnaire and get responses depending on what i'm looking for pretty fast. So I can recruit a matter of three, four days typically depending on what i'm looking for. And i've been able to get surprisingly specific people um that way. And so that that um is a huge shortcut for me to be able to recruit that way.

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How do you? How do you contact them? Where are they? Uh.

so through user interviews, they work with panel and they com yeah users to come.

Oh amazing. That's very easy. So clinton called email called that.

No I mean in in previous days I used to and I A lot of lazy shift recruiting people through crags list. Um I had people once you know meeting me at a hotel room to test the robot and through credit but um no user interviews is much more legit and very fast um and there are other services like this now um but it's been one of the big changes that that speeds a lot of the stuff up.

That's a way too easy. How many people do you reach out to to go through your screen roughly to get to five?

Uh, so IT will depend on on what I post and how much response I get. So there are times has been somewhat hard for me to predict. There are times I do IT and i'll just they just um the responses to start rolling in. So the times I get like four hundred responses basically download into a spread sheet and just start sitting through as a reference. I have my criteria and then i'm just trying to find who matches who doesn't.

okay? So goes to hundreds IT can .

be hundred sometimes if i'm looking like I did one recently, I was looking for a very particular group of the A I. engineers. What did not get foreign responses.

That was a very hard one to find. That was an example where there was this very particular group that we are looking for. And as like art, do these exist like this thing that you're solving for? I don't know. It's pretty hard to fine. These people are not sure they're existing.

Yeah and tear point that's a sign like I think there's a uh a new one teer. If this group is hard, not only hard to find but hard to reach and get them to talk to you at at all, that's already a gna make your life hard building this company the cavy .

out there is there are times when you need to talk to somebody who's just very hard to find your heart. They are not going to be on user interviews. Ws, so like I done a lot of work in the past with oncologists with flat on health.

So oncologists are not on user interviews. They don't care about one hundred twenty five dollars like they are. They're busy doing something more important. And so if i'm doing that, I need to find a different way to approach that.

So then i'm thinking about where do these people kind of cluster online or in person that I might be able to target them? They're certain forms of certain conferences, these kinds of things, or am doing snowball recruiting? If you're building a product for oncologists, you hopefully probably have some contacts with oncology and you can kind of have work through their network.

I've found one person they can recommend, another person. You still want to filter them and make sure that they are matching your core criteria. Ia, but that IT requires different kinds of techniques to find those kinds of folks, professional associations.

I just want to go down that track because I feel like there's a lot to learn there, but I want to i'm going to they focused and keep going through our steps. But let me take a quick change. So as you are talking, I actually read a post in the past on how to identify I, C, P.

And I put together, uh, a table of the very first I C P for some of the biggest B2B sas com panies tha t I p ul l tha t per son on me jus t giv e a f ew exa mples of how nar row som e of the se com panies wor k. Really went out to sell the product. Sell we do a you, uh so gong, which is one of the biggest B2B Saa S com panies, their first, uh, both like customer as they described IT was like, I know this is software company.

There are customers or ideal customers or software company selling in english, selling via video conferencing, selling software that cost one thousand to one hundred thousand dollars. Elena, their focus was two to five person startups using github b and google auth at a founder driven product company. And let's see, one more of us that was really funny. Companies will lessen five employees in california .

who have no contractors.

See what inching to me about those is that I would go even deeper and more specific because some of those things like are and then that's fine, like I don't know internally how they actually described the the details of IT, but like some of those, you want very concrete, measurable things to be able to tease apart like what our founder LED art like what you like? How are you behaving? What other products are you're using in your stack? You know that this fits or doesn't fit?

This is yeah so it's interesting because when people saw this initial, they're like, that's crazy. How narrow there getting and I love that you're like that is not narrows at all. You got so much more .

era because if I had to recruit.

those people are too brought. And I think that's an important point here is like this exercise, you get more narrow to do this research, but that's not like your actual I C P as you describe. okay. So I understand what you're what you're saying now more and more of like the difference between buzzie customer and icp, the buzz customers for research to help you identify as broader I C P your business targets.

Yeah and I think this has actually touches on another important point, which is that this is a learning exercise. So that's what i'm describing is how do we learn more faster um and this is different from selling, right? So what I hear a lot is people like among customer calls were selling all the time.

And obviously, you can learn a tongue from selling and pitching in meeting with companies, potential people who seem like maybe they are customers. But that mode is very, very different from what i'm describing, which is to learn to can run these experiments as fast as you can. And there's something just even a mindset and how you approach the conversations that's fundamentally different.

So there's this term that I love, that edge shine coin, which is humble inquiry. And so it's the he frames that as a humble inquiry is the gentle art of asking instead of telling. And so to me, that's like this fundamental way that I think about even just conducting these interviews.

So if you are in a selling mode and and I I encounter this over over with has a product and founders, is that if you're they're very they're very good at and they're very used stone, they're required to just sell all the time and are pitching their vcs. They are pitching their customers. But that's very different from learning and being in humble inquiry.

You basically have to be vulnerable. And I can always do IT because i'm not the founder and I like I I always present myself as like I don't know the space and I know i'm an idiot. Like can you explain that to me? But asking questions in being vulnerable and giving the person you're asking the higher status is a difficult thing to do.

Was a founder when you're selling, right because you you don't want to be vulnerable and and express that you don't know or or and people are always I come across the very nervous about that. So there's something that's very distinct here about a learning mode versus a selling mode, selling and telling. This is kind of this idea of humble inquiry. So I think that actually an important distinction here.

I love that. And I think that helps that you finding grand dos on user interviews that you don't have to raise much about versus like finding great insurance through bs that you do worry about, right? awesome.

okay. So we're talking we've been talking about the step of our cooling your boss eye customers. So you find these folks you filled to the screener ers. You pick five and you schedule them for the same date. Is there anything else that that that is important to cover if to .

make sure they show up, make sure you're competition them sufficiently? Um this is something i'm not giving twenty dollars starbucks card because something going to blow you off like when I have those five sessions and the whole team queued up to watch, I want people to show up. So i'm making sure on reminding people and making sure that they are kind of responsive to me when I massing them to e sign in.

Da, I had a time like my hearing back from them and i'm paying for most like typical kind of consumer things, like a hundred twenty five books an hour for them to show up and do this. So um it's worth spending the money. If I recently did something where I was talking to attorneys, I was paying hally rate. I was paying like florian of box hour for them show but I I need them .

to show up yeah good point. Good point. Uh, and I love this hundred, twenty five, one hundred there. Like you've seen a difference there that it's like something more than one hundred.

I think that that's based on whatever the policy is that alphabet that somebody said. Um so that's a standard that i'm um I see .

i'm going .

with funning and also and IT also has just seem to work. People are showing up for that. So if people weren't that.

I would just and you do back up people just in case someone doesn't show up. But it's just like R, I guess me, whenever this does happen.

I actually don't. So user interviews by working with them and by doing some of these other things along the way where i'm making sure people are kind of responding to me during the course of the week leading up to IT. Did you sign my N D A? Like I send a reminder, you respond.

I can tell if they are engaged, if i'm getting, if some is essentially goes to me, I am getting nothing, i'll just swap them out. But I don't use alterations and I have very, very high. followed。

great. okay. Uh, what's the next step?

So then the next step is to figure out your prototypes. And so what I want to do with those is I want to create again the three distinct examples, three distinct recipes of um the possible features and distinct variables that we want to present in in these interviews. And so as I said before, ideally I can find product competitors products and use those as free prototypes like that.

I love doing that. It's surprising to me that often people don't do more of this. And I think that there is sometimes a sense that like it's cheating or they're worry they're gonna copy IT or something.

I'm like whatever, if you haven't studied your competitors products and not just gone through IT, but like seeing how people were onto them, you just missing something, right? So what we do is work out um the details of of the variables that we're going to spread across these prototypes. So there are certain features and uncertain variables across that I kind of imagine spread across uh these different things.

So um for example, we are talking about delivery of specially medications. So imagine um one of the attributes is uh who's delivering IT. So maybe one version is a pharmacist is going to come.

One is a um uh it's just A A delivery um career guy. And then another one, in this case actually IT was a drone company. So a drone is dropping the thing off. And so we could talk more about what I was like to test that, but there are different variables here.

Um the other option is say um the size of the window of the delivery window, right? So this come in two days, but you can narrow down on in a fifteen minute window. This one is like as soon as possible you just have to be home away.

This so where we're developing this range and then creating these prototype that are very simple, they're just PDF really a very flat. There's no functionality. It's a lot of IT is really A A writing exercise to articulate what's the distinct value prop and what's the brand promise and the problem you're solving for each of these prototypes.

Um so you want to make IT look as real as possible. So IT looks like a home page for the product. So you write the box around the things you want to build anything you're just describing IT and putting whatever you need to illustrate and convey that. But they need to stand alone. I'm not gonna pitch them or narrate to them and just create those so that I can present those three distinct recipes.

And these are these calls are usually over sume in your experience at this point cause so these are kind of just like a in figgins or exported just images.

You're showing people exactly sweet.

uh, more and more on the spot cast. People are sharing ways just how A I is making prototypes, like actual product prototypes, so much easier to creep. So imagine people get to move to like functional prototypes more more.

Yeah, they may. I I think the thing that's important is to not get distracted by that. So here there is a the benefit to keeping IT simple is that your not too bad and too committed to anything. So keep IT build only as much as you actually need to answer the question you're trying to answer.

So it's a great point. So it's like even if you can create an awesome prototype, don't do that, probably just keep IT flat.

Design awesome means very crisp ly describing the distinct t value proposition and problem your solving in a way that people get IT. They're like, oh, I understand what this one is and then I can compare IT to these other ones and I understand what the features are and I can have that conversation. It's about the value prop.

It's about making sure that they understand what IT is. It's not this kind of marketing speak really like. Wait, what you just have to be super blunt. This is kind of what IT is and why this is awesome and why this one is awesome. And then there's shopping.

I love that. So basically, as you said, it's writing excise is like the headline. The positioning seems to be the most important part of man verses like the design of IT, right?

And and I designed them enough that they look different for each other. So it's not version a, version b, version c. Because in the course of the conversation with all the observers, I wanted to be clear which prototypes somebody is talking about.

So the Green one versus the blue one versus the red one, right? So then when the observers can keep otherwise you like, which one are they talking about? I don't know what happening. awesome.

Okay anything else that is important? Note on the prototype .

step um profit carefully, people stuck on errors and then that undermines the validity and the credibility of the prototype. So profit IT and make sure because others SE people back.

oh, that's not right. Such a uh, so just have someone else read IT like someone else that is for anything. Uh, okay.

So what's the next steps? You have these prototypes. You've got the schedules interviewed, so you have people come in.

Yeah so your schedule, so people showing up on thursday, we're going to start doing interview. You have to draft your interview guide. And so what these interviews are going to look like in the course of that watch party, it's um five one hour interviews.

Each interview is a two part interview. So the first part of the interview is this discovery interview, where I am asking people about their existing and past experiences and attitudes and opinions about what ever this part of their life is. How did you previously get your medications delivered? What worked? What didn't work?

Tell me about a time when IT totally went sideways. Tell me about a time you worked perfectly. So we go through that and have that about a half way through that interview. I shift to comparing and contrasting these prototypes.

So the comparing and contrasting is i'm presenting each prototype and people are kind of responding to that and like telling me what they see, what this is, and then they are responding to what each of these prototypes says, what what they like, what they don't like, what's important, what's not important. Some parts that they don't comment on is fine. Like if that that doesn't in register, that's good to know.

And then i'm having them comparing contrast. So by having three different prototypes, it's enough for them to then sort of step back and not pick a winner but be able to say like or I like this aspect of this one. I like the fact that this one's being delivered by a pharmacist, but I really prefer that the other one is a fifteen minute window, for example, until they're kind of teasing out what are the the best pieces of each of these.

And that's really what i'm looking forward to. The course of this conversation is I wanted grab the best bits and pieces, the best lego pieces, so I can then go construct the ideal version next because none of these, again, i'm not gone to build. Probably any one of those.

I'm looking for the best pieces. And through the art of that conversation by doing the first half where we've had the discovery conversation, IT gives me a huge amount of context to understand their feedback about the prototypes because there will be times when they'll. Say things or tell us something.

And because we heard the first part, they'll tell us something about the prototype. And because of what we heard in the first part will understand why like oh because they had that other experience in the past where that thing we're totally hay or when something like that happened and they don't have trust in that. Like and now I know why that's the situation.

And it's very, very, very common that when teams are watching this that always like for for great like margol, would you just like get to the prototypes? Like why are you just talking to them about all these other stuff and you're just like chit chatting with them, like a show on prototypes. And so we always have to remind people like know that this is really important.

Partly you also just learning a lot. You hear the stories, which is what you want to get. But IT provides a lot of context for understanding the reaction to the the prototype.

I love all that context assured. This is the step, I think, where everyone gets kind of scared or RAID thinking they're doing this wrong. They are racing people. So in the book that willink to you, give them a guide for how to read out this whole interview, get I have the book care.

And i'm just like looking at an example where it's like, I like it's like there's a warm up, there's the introduction and then it's like your current experience with this problem cost to depends on the problem space. But I love like in the world of big smile. Hi, thanks for helping me with this um thanks for signing the india. Uh whatever i'm dalling from seattle, whether I reached you and then and say, has the weather where you are, it's all these like nice little questions you can asked, keep IT light and then it's and then just a few examples of questions. You like you you asking this example where it's about medication.

Like do you currently have prescription medication that you have to order refill? How many if I, I, I ask, what are they and when was last time you feel the prescription and on or not? So it's kind of this whole set of questions just to help understand the the world view around this problem in the context around the and the way .

that I think about IT is that i'm building an arc in that conversation. And so IT starts, like you said, this, just chit chat about the weather and where you are. Ever do I care about what the weather like? Care what the weather is like, but what i'm trying to do is build some repair fast with somebody um again IT gets back to this idea of humble inquiry where i'm trying to build a connection with the person.

I'm trying to make them feel comfortable um because they usually are showing up. They like they wanna make you happy, but they don't really understand IT like IT is awkward if super weird like there's this i'm in talk to this weird dude is paying me to tell him like what turns out to be a bunch of personal stuff and we're never gona talk again. Like am I doing a good job? But like it's it's it's odd.

And so i'm trying to put them at is and i'm trying to encourage them and make IT clear like thereby expert in the situation. They don't really know what's going to happen. And so i'm building this are slowly, overly, not too slowly, to get them talking.

So one of the most important things is when you're doing that interview smile, you have to start with the big smile, even if you're on the phone, IT totally changes the way your voice sounds. And what i'm often looking for in those first few minutes is, are they smiling back? And I get the person to smile back at me and then like, okay, we're good. Like i'm getting them response to you.

getting them talking. I love that tip. And again, I think a lot of people aren't researchers are just going like I don't know, i'm like and that this feels weird, something that should be reassuring as mostly are just asking questions, right? Like it's just it's on them, like you're just asking questions and your job is not to not to say anything, almost just keep asking questions.

yeah.

And to be really genuinely curious, like I think that's really again, it's to this mindset, this difference between selling and I have to genuinely want to understand and see the world and my product through their eyes and you're going to hear stuff that is wrong, you know doesn't make sense or you like, that's weird. What is that? And you just have to not dismiss that, but dig in and try to understand like why why do you think that what gives you that impression? That's what you're trying to learn, right? And just smile, genuine curiosity and focus on that persons in front of you is will get you pretty far any other .

tips on the steps for folks that are like, okay, i'm going to try this myself. I'm gonna start start anything folks any other tips anything else important thing is worth mentioning?

Yeah a practice that makes a difference. It's it's a hard skill IT seems to go everybody talks to everybody but it's different when I do this and I done three thousands of people at this point um I have a different character mode that I put my head in.

And so I literally before I turn interview, I stop, I take a deep breath and I kind of put on that smile and I put on my listener character where I am embodying these things, this extreme curiosity, this focus on the person um this engagement which is quite different from my Normal kind of more cynical, sceptical a personality to the point where with my kids like i've overheard, like who is that do because that does not sound like dad, whoever was talking to that person. But it's a different mode in my head where i'm in interviewer mode. And so you might maybe as just me, but you might develop kind of that other character, especially if you're founded the pitching, you can have your the listener character okay.

that's an all some tip. okay? And so I think that the next step is the final step, which is the watch party. We actually do this.

yeah. So this is oxygen. So this is like our, like our magic hack for for banging all the stuff together, right? So everything is coming together in this watch party.

So in this watch party we have, again, I am conducting, i'm of zoom one conducting these interviews in the watch party. Veness o kate, around to its my amazing design partners often are facilitating the group there. And so what they're having the team do is take notes and do go through these debrief sessions in between each interview.

And so we have a very particular way that we structure all of that, and it's very important that the team is all in there and watching and doing this together. So i'm in zoom. I have to set up.

So it's live streaming to them. So they're not in my zoom. It's not like twenty of us with a bunch of heads watching.

The person is really important to me that just me and and the customer that i'm talking to directly. So they're all life streaming IT. Um they're on they're taking notes.

They're in a google doc or notion or dog or what everyone collaborate vely doing that. And so people are assigned roles. So take turns taking notes because it's pretty intense.

We have people manually taking notes and not using A I to take notes. Um the reason for this is what we found is we want people to lean in to the experience. We want you to focus and engage and pay a lot of attention.

And if you know somebody else taking notes, that tends to maybe make you leaning out a little bit or maybe you check your slack or you look at the email or something. And so it's about keeping you really engage and working. So it's it's it's a working watch party.

So we take turns. We've assigned roles. So people know, okay, interview to lenin margol, you're going to be taking notes, that's fine.

And then there's also a slack channel, usually the background because is leather chatter like what do they say they are talking about this? They mentioned that product. Has anybody hurt of that? So that's really important kind of going in the background.

The us. R kate also monitors that. So it's a that's the way that somebody can pass me notes to answer to ask specific other questions. I can I can do the interview and track the note and slide like my brain doesn't can handle that. So they're in there and then I have A A chat when to open just with kate urban.

And so they'll pop me questions as they come up that we usually ask team to be pretty judicious about that because if I get a question like that, I could go a certain way, as you know, ask a question you don't know where it's going to go. And so if it's really important or you see something, we're clearly have misunderstood, something like clarified. So they're taking notes.

This debrief is in a spread sheet that i've set up so that they're key things that we wanted to learn. And so those are specified in that sprats sheet for each of each study that i'm doing. Like these are the key things.

And so those are not the questions that i'm asking the into in the interview, but they're the things again, these key questions that we wanted to learn, which is different from what i'm asking. And so we're just capturing in that half hour the decider. Whoever is kind of owns the product to the founder is leading that right there, the decider.

And there they're leading, getting input, remember body and filling and answering those questions. So then you can imagine you have that first column, that set of questions and then to those of the roads are the questions. And in each participant is another column.

So we're doing participant. We're caption IT after the second one. So we end up with the detailed notes. We have the recording of my interview. Like those of the thickest, deepest levels of this then were the stealing IT down into this deeper is sheet for each one. So then you have a spread sheet that's like the high level step you can look across at the end of the day, at the very last thing, at the end of the day, after the final debrief, we do a big takeaway form. So I create a google form.

And IT just is basically like, how many interviews did you watch just to check? And then um what's your first big takeaway? Second, third, how would you adjust your definition of the buzzie customer here? And kind of what do you think of the next steps to what are your big questions, open questions and concerns? And so each person then takes five, ten minutes, independently, separately, individually, quietly and just everybody music video, and fills that out.

And it's a way to grab a snaps shot from the whole team of, like, what do we really learn? You know, this was the important things that we had set out to do, and what did we learn? And IT captures that. So then again, that fell s out a big spreadsheet. And we then review that the the decider kind of go through IT and talks about what are the key patterns, what are the things that we've learned two years a team.

And there's a remarkable amount usually of consensus of alignment about like what is this? What do we need to do next? What I love seeing is that, quite Frankly, one of the most common things across all of these businesses, all these sites, uh all these all these um studies is that one of the things that people say we need to do next is more research. And so people are just even though these are all teams have said, like we talk our customers all the time we go through this, there was like, oh yeah, this was really different than what we were doing and we didn't know this stuff. One of the other things I want to mention is we do this thing before the watch party, where we get a bit to predict what they think they're going to learn.

I love that.

and this is really valuable for a bunch of different reasons. So it's a way to capture a snaps shot before we do the interviews of like what do you actually think is going to happen and and we have to push people to be specific. It's not oh, we'll find out how they what they think of our concept like yeah ah I never going to learn that but like what do you actually think is gna be the the outcome?

People will prefer know sap delivery of their medications and you like whatever what what is your hypothesis of what's going to happen here? Um and and that helps me do a couple things. One is that helps me make sure that i'm telling ing me and ever you guys everything the right way because it's it's another check like a wife.

My understanding what you want to get out of this is a snaps shot of what we wanted to learn. And then what happens is after we go through the big takeaway at the end of the whole study is very valuable to go back and say, how is what we learned compared to what you thought because there's this any researchers that they're listen to this will be familiar with this idea. There's this hindsight bias that happens, which is as you've gone through the process, it's very difficult to remember what you didn't you know that you did already know this, right? And so after you've gone through research, study very often feel like we that seems obvious.

We kind of knew that, that was gonna en. Like, no, no. Like let's look back at a day ago what we all thought and we actually have have learned that, which is awesome.

Like that's the goal we've learned at any Normal amount, and it's not to catch anybody out, right? But it's really valuable to have the snapshot and to, quite Frankly, just help show the value. The research, like we learn things or maybe we didn't, maybe you you're all right, which is awesome. And now we know we can move forward twice as fast.

The point you made about how most people after this are late, wow, we need this is now we expect to. And I want to do this more. I know that feeling so well every time you're like.

Now I don't need to talk to customers that I understand what we need to build. And then you do you're like home. Where are we doing this all time? What are we doing now? Is such a powerful feeling. Yeah.

there's other thing that I think is worth mentioning that i've come across, which be when we do this set of predictions. So again, it's across all different kinds of businesses, all different kinds of domains. There are certain patterns that I noticed that show up over and over about um this predictions like this.

There's a pattern of the kinds of things that show up over over that are, I think, of this kind of these common blind spots. And I think it's attributed, I can attribute to this this this conceptive the curse of knowledge. So i'm working with lots of teams who are deep experts in their space, right? I'm not i'm always like showing up as the new, but like, okay, what is your business? What are we doing? But there have deep expertise. And when somebody has deep expertise is very difficult to imagine that other people don't know what you know.

It's very hard to to kind of put yourself in their shoes, right? And you just think what doesn't everybody know this or maybe even, you know, doesn't everybody know this? And so what that leads toward these key blind spots that are very common, which is there's an over estimation of how much your customer knows about the thing, maybe how how bigger problem they even perceive IT to be, how much they're willing to pay for IT, which is connected and kind of where they are on their journey to be ready to buy this thing.

I I wait, there are they're not. They don't. They're not ready yet. Like way they're not there yet or or we haven't figured out who the right people are, who are the boys. Ee, but people over estimate those kinds of things. And it's really common blindspot that we find over, over, across a lot of businesses with expertise .

that make sense, like most startups realized what their china build is not nobody really cares about. So I get why that happens often. Uh, okay, there's anything else in this step of the interview they think is really important to mention. Otherwise, I want to hear what you find. Some common pitfalls and mistakes people make.

Couple things, I guess, about the watch party that I would make sure the team needs to be there and they need to show up.

And this is the whole team, like the whole, all the engineers.

yeah. The way I like to what we found could sometimes we do this, and at a maximum, we had forty people show up that still our record and which is awesome. Like the more the mary, like I want the whole team to see this because part of the shortcut of the watch party is i'm not doing the report.

I don't need to go persuade or explain people what happened like you outside. And we went through IT together, and everybody is a line. That's what happened. But I can make some of these other aspects of the process a little unwieldy. So what becomes important is to define the who's who's the core product team everybodies welcome.

But there's a core product team who's probably taking notes and and like also for us as the outsiders we know like those of the opinions like that, who's really building this thing, who's making those decisions, and it's gna have to own this and to build that or do what I actually do all the work. So distinguish about like who is that core product team. They need to really be there for all of the other people. If if if there's some other engineer and another protest, they want to come in and see one or two awesome love IT. But everybody else, the court team.

you need to be there for all of IT. Where is fine? People often make a big mistake, waste time, have come or blind spots. Maybe on this process.

the time that IT doesn't work as well, there are times I get through up and you like, uh, that, that just didn't works well. It's because for one reason another, we did not select specifically and we didn't recruit specifically enough and weren't picky enough about bolsa de customers.

And so if you end up with a combination of people who IT was a little mushy, like you you let the boss I bleed a little too much in the end, you like, yeah, I don't i'm not sure what the conclusions are to draw here if just feels mushy. And so whenever that happens, I always kick myself like I I the team like took control the recruiting because I was you know their customers and I just wasn't picky y enough. We didn't narrow IT enough for they included some people who are like experts that they already know and they talk to all the time, like didn't, like get what we wanted. And I can be frustrating. So you just have to really be disciplined and picky about about having the right people in there.

which comes back to where we started. Just a like seven attributes. I really like that giving people here is there's like seven ish narrowing attributes of who you are recruiting to get a really specific.

And ideally, you get through through going through this process. What I want to do is get to a point where somebody can a team can narrow down to a point where like actually there's one or two attributes that you realize later, like that's the thing. Oh, it's people on specially medications that are refrigerated, cold chain, all the other stuff maybe not as important, like you figure out that the distinguishing characteristic. And so now if I have some giant fund or a set of needs or all these things I need to paradise, I can stream and all the other sales motion or something else that i'm doing, like that's for now, like we'll expand IT, but for now that i'm gna prioritize people. There are some Robert or some couple questions or characteristics that are really the key ones .

but this reminds me of actually with linear something smart. They did as they had a weight list when they first launched and the weight list was their, uh, questionnaire what what do you call IT the screener? So basically the weight list was a screener survey.

It's like what he used for off what he used for hosting your code and then they pick those people that most match what they actually can do that day. That's brilliant. yeah. So there's a lot of overlap with this exercising and he actually launch ah any other blind spots are pitfalls. Anything other think people often, other than not getting narrow enough.

put more weight on past experiences, then on people's predictions of what they would do.

Classic, classic is a researcher advice.

Same more I described. I do these two part interviews. So that first part is having people describe and explain past experiences, what they have done, what's important to them.

Eta, I put much more weight in that is like building the trajectory of what will this person accept or value or avoid? What do they think of barriers to then showing a part of time like all I would totally do this like that does not sound that all consistent with what you just describe to me. So i'm going to be somewhat skeptical of of your prediction of what you would do or what you think you might happen.

We're terrible IT. It's not about the customer like we're terrible of this predicting what we're going to do. And so I just put much more weight in like what has this person shown and demonstrated in the past as their behavior and their attitudes and opinions? And so I I really try to get teams to anchor more on that.

I love that. And what I think like, I think everyone hears this and there is still fall for this because it's like, oh, great, they're onna use this awesome to build IT. They tell us they would use this immediately. So what I would think back to is your advice of, like, look for extreme excitement like that, more of a signal, and maybe they actually will.

And the other thing that you love IT to is confirmation bias, right? You wanted, and we encourage people in the watch party. We give people kind of rules about how to listen, and we kind of encourage people to make IT o to kind of place each other a little bit and jokingly, like a IT, sounds like your, you know, confirming your own bias about people would do this thing that you thought they would do. You know, should I keep each other honest about what you're actually hearing and try to be as neutral objective about what you're hearing?

That uh to the uh signal that they're excited IT reminds me someone's quote once was look further pupils to to sense how excited they are about .

you can just see IT you do a bunch of this and and you you know and if you don't know, you like it's probably I know which .

is how everyone always describe as what product market IT feels like. You just you don't know that if you don't feel if it's not obvious that you don't happen. Okay, Michael, we did a lot of good work here.

We've gone through the entire process solve everyone's problems. Uh, i'm going to sleep the lighting around just to keep this episode shorter. Is there anything else that you want to leave listeners with this?

Before we wrap up, one thing i've been thinking about and and and recently getting to experiment with, which i'm prety excited about, is to how to apply these methods in biotech. So I should. Big piece of the G V portfolio is in biotech, developing new therapies, new treatments.

That's a very different looking kind of business than a lot of digital, enterprise, consumer kind of products that I work with. What I think is really interesting is as I work more with those people and and so those are years, right? They're doing science. So nobody y's calling me when they're doing science like they don't need that help. They get to a point where there is some productivity of IT.

You need to figure out like, oh, actually, how is this going to fit into a physicians workflow? How will patients react to this relative to some other possible treatment or other things that are out there? How do we encourage more people to a crew onto a clinical trial? How do we think about a clinical trial as a product and and streamline that IT makes you we're targeting the right people and increasing the number of people are getting on there.

So what's been interesting as, as I work with teams and we talk about expert teams, as I talk to people who come kind of from that tradition and know where else to describe IT is, they don't they're doing similar work, but they don't seem to describe themselves as product managers. They have other kinds of titles they come from like patient education. So they have these other titles, but they're doing similar kinds of work.

And so but they come kind of from this other place. And so it's really and they they talk about tp PS target product profiles, right? It's like this different language in this different world to me, but it's the same it's like the same things, the same methods in the same stuff.

So the idea of bringing some of these methods there is I have been getting to do more recently is really exciting to make. X IT feels like there's a uh, partly that feels like Green field and partly just feels like the impact there is huge, right, for some of those things. So so that's something they're just done thinking a lot about recently is because kind of be excited about those kind of opportunities. And also just kind of curious to hear from some of your listeners if they're doing some of these and those spaces.

This is a good safe way to to final questions they asked everyone. So perfect. Uh, one is just share where people can find your book. If they want to go deeper, they want to practice the themselves. And also, do you like, do they reach out if they want to work with you on sort of things that just share what folks can do if they want to learn more. And then coming back to which you just that can listeners these events may be share coal or biotech stuff.

so learn more faster that com um you can go grab a free copy the book. Um there's all kinds of demo videos of me doing interviews. There's all kinds of work sheet and resources.

The reason are really nervy researcher play list there. So please just go grab stuff. It's all free like again, i'm i'm not selling anything. I'm just really eager to get people to try this um and and use IT and please tell me in terms how you could help me tell me your stories, try and let me know what works, how you adapted um how what applies even places that aren't early stage start up so I assume some of this is irrelevant there. I'm so please let me know ways you can reach me to let me know is Michael at learn more faster dot com um you can just directly send me a out there I don't can guarantee of, replied everybody, but not read at all. And among like then is probably a really great place to reach me.

And IT sounds like you all answer the last question, how can folks be hell? Just like share their experience with yeah total.

Just tell me your your stories. How did you use this? What did you use IT on? What work? What didn't? How should we fix? IT feels like we are excited that we're able to open, open source. This, the G, V was able to do that. And so part of that is help me updated and fix IT.

awesome. And just to clarify, if folks want to like go really deep, do you work with companies just like at hawker? How does that work? Just people.

Now I work with G V portfolio company.

so OK so go with yeah .

my whole time job is ux research partner at gb. Awesome.

Michael. They keep so much for being here.

Thank you a time and have loved. This has been super fun.

awesome. I love to hear that by everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can submit to the show on apple podcast, spotify or your favor podcast up.

Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving your view as that really helps other listeners find the forecasts. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lenny's podcast dot com. See you the next episode.

We're sunsetting PodQuest on 2025-07-28. Thank you for your support!

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