Pretty good article, and it's hard to argue with any of his advice... but it seems a bit prescriptive and I would have liked if he had included some examples, lessons learned, etc.
Otherwise, and with absolutely zero gratuitous negativity intended, I get the impression that he wrote this piece to pitch Canny.io as opposed to genuinely wanting to help other entrepreneurs.
I honestly think if I had read this article 2 years ago, I could have gotten as far as I am now in half the time. That's huge, and I genuinely think these words can help others.
I mentioned Canny at the top of the article because I got feedback that I should in order to show my credibility around talking about the subject.
If it didn't somehow benefit Canny, it wouldn't make sense to spend the time writing it. It definitely wasn't my only motivation though.
Great article in general. User or customer research definitely shouldn’t be about idea validation. “This feature is good, right?” is a loaded question that would give responses that don’t reflect what your market really thinks. People who ask it find out what they really thought when they launch to silence or experience high churn.
I love how you address value in pricing, too! And how you identify that there are lots of good states between dead and $100MM per year. I know several entrepreneurs who see their SaaS as more of a lifestyle business, and high six figures / low 7 figures gives them a very good lifestyle.
This is the first time I’ve heard of Canny, and the product has an interesting premise. As a user researcher / design strategist who was a developer before, I’d like to see it have a way to map the users giving feedback onto user personas or customer personas instead of treating each user like they’re all the same.
That would make Canny a lot more powerful, in terms of prioritizing features and showing companies how to make higher-value decisions, like redesigning their product, realigning their content, or splitting their product (for different pricing tiers or in general).
Ah yeah! We really want to do "feedback segmentation" where you can plug it into Salesforce / Intercom / Segment to see what your "enterprise customers are saying", or etc.
Yeah, a lot of engineers look at business and think "Well, it can't be that hard..." And it's not -- but you don't have as much control over things as most founders pretend to, and you're really at the whims of your customers.
I think you're right, a lot of engineers start with a solution in mind and that's the wrong way to go about this. Sure, you can spend a month building a prototype to validate your idea, but if your idea is something that nobody is willing to pay you for, it's not going to make a good business.
That's what the phrase "do things that don't scale" means -- go out, find something that someone is willing to pay you to do, and do it at a discount so you can work the inefficiencies out of the process. If nobody is willing to pay you to do it manually, it's not a market worth chasing.
The vast majority of products are simply new implementations of an old idea/service with some enabling technologies under the hood that allow you to do those things with less overhead (thus you can undercut your competitors for a sustained advantage).
Thanks for reading! I definitely left FB thinking I had a good idea, spent 3 months building it to find out people didn't reallllly want it. It sucked.
Definitely wish I could go back and do that differently which is what inspired the post.
> Your idea doesn’t matter. What matters is what the market needs: What problem will real people/companies pay you to solve?
False. There is a famous quote by Ford about markets and faster horses. Point being the market doesn't know what it needs or wants until someone actually makes it because typically people just want more of the same but faster and cheaper.
Hey, author here. I think we're actually in agreement.
I'm saying you shouldn't ask people what they want, you should understand their problems (they want to get around faster), and then design a solution to solve them. Real people/companies will pay you to solve their problems.
The important part is that it's about problems, not solutions.
If you frame the problem correctly, the market will answer you.
The real problem is "I need to move people / things from point A to point B". A horse solves that, as does an automobile, as does a boat. The market won't tell you that directly.
It's all about learning how to ask the right questions.
[+] [-] SeeDave|8 years ago|reply
Otherwise, and with absolutely zero gratuitous negativity intended, I get the impression that he wrote this piece to pitch Canny.io as opposed to genuinely wanting to help other entrepreneurs.
[+] [-] a13n|8 years ago|reply
I honestly think if I had read this article 2 years ago, I could have gotten as far as I am now in half the time. That's huge, and I genuinely think these words can help others.
I mentioned Canny at the top of the article because I got feedback that I should in order to show my credibility around talking about the subject.
If it didn't somehow benefit Canny, it wouldn't make sense to spend the time writing it. It definitely wasn't my only motivation though.
[+] [-] DavidParmelee|8 years ago|reply
I love how you address value in pricing, too! And how you identify that there are lots of good states between dead and $100MM per year. I know several entrepreneurs who see their SaaS as more of a lifestyle business, and high six figures / low 7 figures gives them a very good lifestyle.
This is the first time I’ve heard of Canny, and the product has an interesting premise. As a user researcher / design strategist who was a developer before, I’d like to see it have a way to map the users giving feedback onto user personas or customer personas instead of treating each user like they’re all the same.
That would make Canny a lot more powerful, in terms of prioritizing features and showing companies how to make higher-value decisions, like redesigning their product, realigning their content, or splitting their product (for different pricing tiers or in general).
[+] [-] a13n|8 years ago|reply
Thanks for reading :)
[+] [-] exelius|8 years ago|reply
I think you're right, a lot of engineers start with a solution in mind and that's the wrong way to go about this. Sure, you can spend a month building a prototype to validate your idea, but if your idea is something that nobody is willing to pay you for, it's not going to make a good business.
That's what the phrase "do things that don't scale" means -- go out, find something that someone is willing to pay you to do, and do it at a discount so you can work the inefficiencies out of the process. If nobody is willing to pay you to do it manually, it's not a market worth chasing.
The vast majority of products are simply new implementations of an old idea/service with some enabling technologies under the hood that allow you to do those things with less overhead (thus you can undercut your competitors for a sustained advantage).
[+] [-] a13n|8 years ago|reply
Definitely wish I could go back and do that differently which is what inspired the post.
[+] [-] dkarapetyan|8 years ago|reply
False. There is a famous quote by Ford about markets and faster horses. Point being the market doesn't know what it needs or wants until someone actually makes it because typically people just want more of the same but faster and cheaper.
[+] [-] a13n|8 years ago|reply
I'm saying you shouldn't ask people what they want, you should understand their problems (they want to get around faster), and then design a solution to solve them. Real people/companies will pay you to solve their problems.
The important part is that it's about problems, not solutions.
[+] [-] exelius|8 years ago|reply
The real problem is "I need to move people / things from point A to point B". A horse solves that, as does an automobile, as does a boat. The market won't tell you that directly.
It's all about learning how to ask the right questions.
[+] [-] NuDinNou|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a13n|8 years ago|reply