Too many early-stage startups get so heads-down with building that they forget to gather feedback. But here’s the thing: building in a vacuum means you’re risking missed signals from the outside world. Startups without customers can still gather valuable insights! Those of you who remember your early days (or are still in them) of building, how did you go about collecting feedback?
Still in the early days 🙋🏻♀️ Right now we’ve been collecting feedback in a few ways: 1. From the existing customers - support tickets they send us, contacting them directly to ask about their experience (with consent), and we started building a community around them so we can keep the conversation going and how we can be better. 2. From the not yet customers but target market - we have our social media presence, and we’re deep in the weeds in the communities where our icps are. With who we can, we try to have more conversations about their needs or feedback for why they havent tried us yet. Etc.
It's all about having tight loops with your customers. Find your early super fans who are willing to give you their time, and setup regular(ish) meetings with them. Not too often, but at least once a month. And if you find some that HATE how your current product is working (for good reason) and want you to fix it, those are great people to ideate with and discover ways to turn pain points into benefits. There's also good old A/B testing, services like userzoom etc. But the main thing is to do continual testing, interactions and conversations. It will save you TONS of time and money and deliver success much faster than "release and learn".
I was literally gonna ask about collecting feedback Janna. But I’ll start with a little method by Joanna Weibe that I got from Turing Fest a couple of weeks ago… Have a feedback form somewhere in your funnel
As former CEO, CPO, & CPTO, I help executives increase the performance of their digital product development.
4moI still prefer: As early as possible, face-to-face with your customers, and frequent.