Customer dev interviews, pretty cool!

October28

It has been about 5 weeks since I started back full time on a new business. I’ve been doing a ton of customer development interviews to test assumptions and try to narrow in on where we want to build our product. What are customer development interviews?

“Meeting with customers during the early stages of a new product definition provides an understanding of the underlying needs, opinions, and motivations behind their behavior. It validates assumptions about the problems we are willing to solve and informs a value proposition. At the same time, we have the chance to develop ideas or hypotheses to be tested with a successive quantitative research.” More here…

Basically, they are a way to learn what problems people are having, test if they are really trying to fix them with time/money, and test your own guesses. As you learn more you keep refining the interview until you feel you are ready to start building. And, the hope is you can get 5 to 10 beta clients who are willing to commit before you build your product. This is a new process so I have been learning a lot. I wish I had used this at past businesses :).

So, where am I at?

  • I’ve done 31 interviews on general meeting frustrations.
  • I’ve done 16 interviews around employee retention.
  • I’ve done 2 interviews on meeting solutions we have narrowed it down to and think we want to build a product around.
  • I’ve got another 20+ interview lined up to further test what we have narrowed down the problem too.

I really like the process and I’ve gained some insights we would not have found elsewhere. I’ll update where we end up as we figure it out…

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This is bwb’s personal blog, so he can share his thoughts with the world, however scary or silly they might be. Plus family and friends can track what I am up to, and where I am in the world.

I am pretty simple. I love Mangos. I love the ocean (although mostly at sunset, as I’m a ginger). I love to travel, eat exotic food, do long bike rides, read, and use my imagination. At some point, I decided it was better to be a pirate captain than an admiral. I am a globalist and see the entire world as my responsibility and playground. And I am married to an amazing woman who makes life even more fun :)! And we are now the proud parents of Calico Jack :).


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