Lean Startup and Customer Interviews (Boss: Kevin)

So I luuuv lean. Usually when I’m chatting with someone about their business idea, it just finds it way and sneaks into the conversation. I feel like needing to shout to the world. It is such a different way of thinking, I feel it is my responsibility to show the light 🙂

So Wednesday, it Kevin-Boss-Day. We did customer interview to find frustrating problems in social media. In 9 hours, I:

• contacted social media expert through Toronto meetups (worked really well)
• 5 customer interviews (of which three were great about an hour each)
• 9 scheduled interviews within the next week

 

Seven Ways to Find Interviewees. blog.launchbit.com/how-to-find-and-interview-potential-customers by Elizabeth Y. I didn’t go through the list but thought I leave it hear from future reference.

• “Spray and Pray” channels
•    1) craigslist
•    2) online groups (google, yahoo, facebook, ning)
• In Person channels
•    3) Malls & coffee shops
•    4) meetups (meetup, eventbrite, yelp)
• Targeted channels
•    5) Linked In
•    6) Alumni Networks
•    7) Google Searches

 

Sample text. Although tracking down their telephone numbers proved very useful. Sometimes it is so great to just PICK UP THE PHONE!

“Hi <expert>,   Happy Wednesday!! I’m an entrepreneur in Toronto and I’m doing some research for a project on social media and am trying to learn how what frustrates people about social media. I’d really love the chance to chat with you, would you be free for a 12 minute call sometime this week. Please let me know, it would really make my day!  Cheers, Christine”

 

I left my questions pretty open ended so that I wouldn’t skew the conversation (I often do).

• What are the most frustrating aspects of ABC
• If you had a magic want to help you with ABC, what would it do?

 

Conclusion. Great conversations! I’ve done a few more interview since Wed, still most last an hour. Then I would followup with my mock which I created using photoshop in an hour. Helps people really visualize my thoughts. Just like it helped my clients visual my designs in floorplans for event planning.  I know people have mentioned this before, but damn. I’m getting pretty good at this customer interview stuff 🙂