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It's a bad idea for founders to be doing their own market research. The prevailing advice from "startup gurus" like Steve Blank is that you must "get out of the
by tchock23 12y ago
It's a bad idea for founders to be doing their own market research. The prevailing advice from "startup gurus" like Steve Blank is that you must "get out of the building" and talk to customers face-to-face. Here's the problem with that advice (as Dinnr found out):
1. Very few people will tell a founder their idea is bad right in front of them; and
2. Founders suffer from the worst case of confirmation bias ever. They are only looking for positive signs that their idea is good.
There are ways around this error if you know market research methods well enough, but unfortunately the prevailing wisdom in the startup community is the only way to do thorough market research is for the founders to "get out of the building" and do in-person interviews.
It's refreshing to see articles like this where the founder realized their errors and didn't just outright blame the process of market research.
- michaelbuckbee 12y agoIt's for reason #1 that for all support and followup emails I sign my emails as coming from "Developer Support", despite being the founder. I've gotten some great feedback from customers 'venting at the support guy' that I don't think I would have if they knew I was actually the founder.
- pimlottc 12y agoThank you. Market research is a formal practice performed by trained professionals with experience in (among other things) framing the questions correctly and interpreting the responses. It's not something you can replace with surveymonkey and a few ad-hoc interviews.
- nashadelic 12y agoVery valid points and I believe Stave Blank addresses these by stating the users decide with their wallets. This is a key part of his strategy on model validation. The early customers have to sign up. He's even against tu I g early customers discount.