Asking customers
An entrepreneur wrote to me: “Why do you insist on talking to customers before building a product? How many customers do I need to ask? How do you know if you are right? Please advise.”
I wrote back to him: “If you develop something the customers do not want, they will not buy it. Most startups did not fail because of their ideas but failed because they do not have customers. It is not difficult to build a product if you have the skills, but if no one buys it, what would you do with your product?
In my startup course, I insist that students talk with customers to understand their needs before building anything. Of course, before talk to customers, they must know who their customer are and how many of them are there and determine how big the business could be. If there are only a few customers, the question is, do they want to spend their time and efforts for a very limited market? In a technology startup, students must always think big and plan to grow the company bigger.
As entrepreneurship students, they must develop a deep understanding of customers’ needs because of a simple rule: “No customers, no startup.” There are students who are blinded by their idea or personal ego, instead of talking to the right customers, they only search for someone who agrees with them to validate their idea, so they can build what they want, but they always end up building a product that no one will buy.
The startup is a serious business, and you cannot build your business based on a “vague idea” and think that you will succeed. You cannot wish for something and spending money and efforts to build a product that you think people will buy. To succeed, you must have all the facts by asking customers before building your product and start your company.
In my class, students are required to develop a list of people that they think could be customers or users of their “future product.” From the list, they must identify who may be willing to talk with them and go out and meet them. Depending on their idea and what their “future product” does, they can find people who may be interested in their product. As they talk to these people, they will know more about their needs, and after talking to many of them, they will know whether their idea is good or not. If students begin working on the idea based on their idea but have not talked to enough customers, they will fail my course. Even if they have talked to ten or thirty customers and have changed their idea based on their needs, that is still not good enough. They must talk to at least eighty to one hundred customers to make sure that they have enough information to build their product so they will not waste time and efforts on something that may not succeed.
I am sure many entrepreneurs do not like this approach. To ask customers is not easy and very challenging but it ensures that you will have a better chance of succeeding. You can study all the startup books or attend many startup workshops, but if you do not go out and practice this technique of validating your idea with customers, you will never understand entrepreneurship. By actually doing this, you will learn more about customers and their needs as well as the market so you can determine whether you should continue with your idea or change it to something else.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
