Understanding ‘Customers’

In the tech startup, no matter what you are working on, it has the same purpose: solving people’s problem. I want to talk about people here. Because I found it is the most difficult thing in a business to find potential customers. And that’s what everything is based on, including what problem to solve.

As long as you are doing things other than making bread and producing clean water, everything you say about people is a guess, simply because you don’t know if it’s true or false without they telling you themselves or seeing it’s happening. There exists extensive process to do customer development. I realized most people don’t have the luxury to spend time to study, so here is simple takeaways.

Skeleton to understand a ‘customer’

• Come up with assumptions/guesses of who would be your customers: they are the people you want to solve problems for and get paid from
• Understand everything about them from online: lay out questions about who they are, what lifestyle they have, what’s their everyday work like, what are their goals, what are the tools they are using
• Talk to real people that fit into your assumption: ask friends for introduction or go to places where they hang out, and chat with them to find out: is everything you imagined about this person is correct; what really happens in their work; what are the challenges they have that directly link to their goals. Do this quickly and do it on many people. T_ake notes, read them and think what you have learned_.
• Engage promising people in your mvp building: identify a few people who are passionate about what you want to do and really want to use it. keep communicating with them about your progress and invite them for user tests whenever it is necessary. When you look at them using your early product and tell you what they think, you get a sense if you are building the right thing for the right people.
• Getting into financials: ask your early users how much they would like to pay or try them on a few numbers. Look for consistent comfort when they tell you this is the number they would like to pay.
• launch: craft the materials you need to launch the first version, simply could be a landing page and your product. Collect their emails, put out ads and post on social media where your customers are and give it some time to work.
• Go back to step 1: it’s a never ending game.

There you have it. A quick note on how to find your customers. And remember, this process will tell you not just about the people, but the whole product-market fit. And people is the most important element in a business. Not the tech, unless you are building machines to replace yourselves.