When entrepreneurs come up with what they think is a killer idea, it is easy for them to get carried away. Too many startups make the mistake of skipping the testing phase. They whip up a product without figuring out what their audience actually wants.

The first step to startup success isn't rocket science, it’s about knowing your users. 🚀

Get inside the mind of your customer… the rest comes later 🧠

Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, is a great place to start when talking anything startups. He suggests you ‘talk to your customers before you build anything, and build only what they tell you to.’

Yes, you heard that right. Your customer is your new boss - they call the shots at this stage.

It may be time to set the ego aside as your idea is no longer about your wants and needs.

It’s time to get to the crux of your customer’s painpoints, needs and desires. 😍

Without holding this key information, your product may as well not exist.  🔑

Research, Research, Research 📖

Getting to know your customer is a process that founders can’t ignore. It all starts with forging a ‘persona’ for your typical user.

An important stage in this research involves asking yourself…

1. Who is my user?
2. What do they do for work?
3. How much spending power do they hold?
4. How old are they?
5. Where do they hang out - be this online or physical places?
6. What is their employment status?
7. How old are they?

(the list goes on)

Yes, it may seem extreme, verging on stalking. But, I promise this is the point. 🔎

You need to understand your user as if they are a friend or family member. Take Steven Blank’s book, ‘The Four Steps to Epiphany’. One of my takeaways from reading this was Blank’s line, ‘the best startups are the ones that learn the most about their customers the fastest’.

Why pay for a perfectly viable product, only for your target persona to tell you it’s crap and that they’d never pay for it? 👛

The solution?

Get to know the user first.

What will they pay for?

How far they are willing to reach into their pockets to get their hands on your product?

Be Prepared to ‘Test Ugly’ 🤢

Establish your problem before anything. Then form a simple prototype or MVP. This doesn’t need to be anything fancy. Simply create a usable product that translates the message of your company. 💬

Funds are often limited at the early stages of a company. So, creating anything more sophisticated that an MVP is pretty much like shredding cash. 💰

Chances are, your users will tell you something that needs changing- at least.

Tip- You want to get the most out of user research. Customers will not hold back on feedback if your product looks unfinished. They won’t stress about offending you if they know they are looking at the the prototype.

You want to let them rip into the product. Trust me, it will serve you in the long run.

The Fundamental Testing Methods you Must be Using ⤵️

1. User Experience

This comes it at number one as it’s vital. Start with friends and family (beware they will be the nicest about your product. So, if they are even a bit negative, you may have a problem.) Different ways to get user feedback are via interviews, surveys, and focus groups. 👥

The key is to avoid leading questions, and focus on the user leading with their ‘stream of consciousness’. You want to truly understand their immediate understanding and thoughts of your product.

Tip- Hiten Shah recommends creating a simple landing page to do user research. ‘A basic landing page is just some copy and a button that leads to a survey money or Wufoo Survey’. Don’t agonise over the page at this stage.

2. Generative Research

This is a form of research that doesn’t necessarily start with an actual hypothesis. It’s about finding out what is really bugging your market. 😡

By letting user’s rant about their problems within your field, you can generate loads of new ideas to solve these problems. One of them might just be a credible business idea.

A great place to start when forming Generative Research is The Mom Test, by Rob Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick advices entrepreneurs to lead conversations with users by talking about their lifestyle. Aim to learn of specifics from their past, rather than potential future circumstances.

And ultimately, talk less and listen more. This isn't about you. 👂🏼

3. Evaluative Research

This kind of research may appear to contradict the premise of Generative Research. However, the two work well when done separately, to gain different conclusions.  Rather than letting the user run free with everything that’s pissing them off within the market, you go in with direct questions. You want to come out with concise answers.

For example,

Would they pay x amount? Exactly how much would they pay?

Here, you want answers, not waffle. 🧇

As referenced in The Mom Test, generic statements such as ‘I might’, or ‘maybe’ are a red flag at this stage. 🚩

If the user is uncertain now, they will certainly not be heading to the checkout when the product launches.

4. Usability Testing

This differs slightly from User research. Instead, usability testing seeks to examine user interface, navigation and easy movement through your pages. 🧭

It’s your chance to perfect UX.

5. Beta Testing

It’s all about the feedback. This is your time to sit back and take it all in, the good and the bad. As ‘empathise with your customers’. However, it is key to be aware of false positives at this point. There is a difference between someone liking your idea, and them actually going ahead to buy it. 👍🏼

Learn from the best founders out there…

Even the most successful companies of today started with the method we have formed here.

Take Dropbox, the cloud storage service most of us will be familiar with. ☁️

The founder, Drew Houston, created a video demo of his product and posted it to a Hacker News Forum. His product was by no means polished, but he was able to gage market desire. His demo went viral. 🌐

Houston refined this MVP through user feedback, going on to add selective sinc and sharing folders.

Instagram wasn’t always what we know it as. The founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger’s first prototype for the app was named Burbn. They started by testing the concept on friends, and found it was far too complex of an idea. So, they simplified it to photo sharing, and Instagram was born. 📸

The key to the success of both Dropbox and Instagram was their initial prototype. As Eric Ries says, ‘an MVP is a down payment on a larger vision.’ 📺

So, if you take anything away from this post, make sure it’s…

User first, product second. 🏆

For more expert guidance, book a free call with a member of the Mindlace team to help kickstart your startup’s journey  ⬇️

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