Good founders maintain a direct connection to their users.
extract information about the all stage of users in the product
The best company is founders themselves connect with their users.
Engineers, designer, product manager - don’t escape from this process
YC requires
- you need to code - build a product
- talk to user
- talk about our idea
- extract data to improve product, marketing, market position
- talk specific, not hypotheticals
- talk about the recurring problems user experiences about their life in more broader way about their context learn about the motivations
- Listen, don’t talk
- extract as much information possible
5 great questions
- What’s the hardest part about [doing this thing]?
- Dropbox - they learn how people share their file open-ended questions specific pain points problem people are facing regular basis
- Tell me about the last time you encountered this problem
- specific time frame the context the problem begins real life example potentially user will face
- Why was that hard?
- specific things they feel difficult of identify exact problem you may begin to solve understand how market your product value the benefit
- What, if anything, have you done to try to solve the problem?
- If potential customers didn’t explore the alternative way to solve the problem, then the problem is not burning enough problem to solve for the customers. What tools they tried to use figure out where the problem you want to solve what are the other competition out there
- What don’t you love about the solutions you’ve tried?
- starting point to figure out the potential features sets what features do you want? hypothetical question Users are not great to identify the next feature they want specifically target what the problems with the existing solutions they’ve already tried are
Talking to users is useful at all stages:
- God idea? → find users with problem
- Built prototype → best first customer
- Launched → find product market
Idea Stage
Find first users with problem
- friends, coworkers, intros
- drop by in person!
- industry events
you don’t have to talk to thousands of people
tips
- take notes
- keep it casual
- careful with their time
- take detailed notes
- feel free to react
Prototype Stage
- Identify best first customers
- before you work with them, identify best first customers
find numerical answers to:
- how much does this problem cost them?
- how frequent is the problem?
- how large is their budget?
best problem
- frequently encountered regular basis → customer feels pain
- you will get the more chances to know whether your product is actually solving the problem
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Launched Stage
- iterate towards product market fit
- When you make product people really want, you will be no longer to push your product. People will pull your product.
https://review.firstround.com/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit
- weekly basis asked this question to some of users
How would you feel if you could no longer use Superhuman?
- very disappointed → measure the percent who answer ‘very disappointed’
- achieved PMF when value is > 40%
- somewhat disappointed
- not disappointed
- The product is a key part of their life for the users choose ‘very disappointed’
- That is the signal, the differentiator point.
- quantitatively measure the product market fit
Launched stage tips:
- ask for phone number during sign up
- don’t design by committee
- discard bad data
- simply ask what features they want
- not specific feedback = bad data
- generic, hypothetical feedback is useful
- learn about the problem
How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product Market Fit
https://review.firstround.com/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit
when it comes to understanding what product/market fit really is and how to get there, most of us quickly realize that there isn’t a battle-tested approach.
Y Combinator founder Paul Graham described product/market fit as when you’ve made something that people want, while Sam Altman characterized it as when users spontaneously tell other people to use your product. But of course, the most cited description comes from this passage in Marc Andreessen’s 2007 blog post:
“You can always feel when product/market fit is not happening. The customers aren’t quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn’t spreading, usage isn’t growing that fast, press reviews are kind of ‘blah,’ the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close.
And you can always feel product/market fit when it is happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. You’re hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can. Reporters are calling because they’ve heard about your hot new thing and they want to talk to you about it. You start getting entrepreneur of the year awards from Harvard Business School. Investment bankers are staking out your house.”
The descriptions of product/market fit all seemed so post hoc, so unactionable.
And I eventually started to wonder: what if you could measure product/market fit? Because if you could measure product/market fit, then maybe you could optimize it. And then maybe you could systematically increase product/market fit until you achieved it.
ANCHORING AROUND A METRIC: A LEADING INDICATOR FOR PRODUCT/MARKET FIT
Ellis had found a leading indicator: just ask users “how would you feel if you could no longer use the product?” and measure the percent who answer “very disappointed.”
After benchmarking nearly a hundred startups with his customer development survey, Ellis found that the magic number was 40%. Companies that struggled to find growth almost always had less than 40% of users respond “very disappointed,” whereas companies with strong traction almost always exceeded that threshold.
