Video · ~25 min

How to Talk to Users

Eric Migicovsky · Y Combinator (Startup School) Free Beginner

How to Talk to Users

When you are new to a space, your instinct is to explain your idea and hope people nod, which teaches you nothing. This YC talk is a concrete guide to running discovery interviews the right way: extract data from the person instead of pitching, and use a small set of questions that work in any industry, including one you are still learning. It pairs well with The Mom Test as the applied version you can watch before your next call.

  • The interview is to extract data, not to sell: stop talking about your idea and let them talk about their problem.
  • Skip hypothetical questions (would you use this) and ask what they have actually done to solve the problem today.
  • A handful of questions works across any industry, so you can start interviewing before you are an expert in the space.
Watch on YouTube ↗

It answers 67 questions

  1. What does 'validating an idea' actually mean?
  2. How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear?
  3. How do I actually get my first 10 customers when nobody has heard of me?
  4. Do I need to be an expert in an industry to start a company in it?
  5. How do I decide which features to cut from v1?
  6. How do I talk to customers without getting false positives?
  7. How do I know if my idea is a real problem or just a 'nice to have'?
  8. Should I build an MVP at all, or can I validate without one?
  9. How do I keep talking to users while I'm heads-down building?
  10. How many people should I talk to, and how do I find them?
  11. As a woman founder, or one building outside the big startup hubs, how do I turn my background into an edge?
  12. How did real successful startups actually land their first customers?

And 55 more across the hub.

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  3. Turns the vague feeling of product-market fit into a number you can move. Ask users how they would feel if they could no longer... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit Rahul Vohra
  4. The definitive essay on where good ideas come from: notice problems you personally have, don't force it. Use it as the lens for... paulgraham.com Essay · ~20 min read How to Get Startup Ideas Paul Graham
  5. The cleanest distillation of the one framework that turns a customer chat into a relationship instead of a survey. The three... Sachin Rekhi's Blog Article · 10 min read A Primer on Talking to Customers From Rob Fitzpatrick's The Mom Test Sachin Rekhi
  6. Long-form, candid interviews with Indian founders and investors on how they actually grew, distributed and built brand, one of... The Neon Show / Neon Fund Podcast · 200+ episodes The Neon Show (100x Entrepreneur Podcast) Siddhartha Ahluwalia
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