Video · ~25 min

How to Talk to Users

Eric Migicovsky (YC / founder of Pebble) · YC Startup Library Free Beginner

A YC partner turns 'talk to users' into a repeatable 5-question interview script you can use this afternoon. It's The Mom Test compressed into a lecture, perfect if you want the method fast before reading the book.

  • Don't pitch your idea, you'll bias every answer.
  • Anchor on the last time they hit the problem, and what they did about it.
  • If they've done nothing to solve it, the problem may not be painful enough.
Open on ycombinator.com ↗

It answers 27 questions

  1. How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear?
  2. What questions should I actually ask in a customer interview?
  3. How many times should I follow up before giving up on a cold prospect?
  4. How do I validate an idea without building anything?
  5. How many customer interviews do I need before I trust the signal?
  6. How do I actually uncover the job my customers are hiring my product for?
  7. Where do I find the very first people to even talk to about my product?
  8. How do I talk to customers without getting false positives?
  9. Where do I find people to interview when I have zero audience?
  10. How do I run customer discovery as an Indian founder building for Indian users?
  11. How do I show a prototype to users without biasing their reaction?
  12. What tools should I use to send and track cold outreach without spamming?

And 15 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. A deep conversation on why direct questions fail and how story-based interviews surface real behaviour. Torres names the common... Lenny's Newsletter Podcast · ~75 min Teresa Torres on how to interview customers Lenny Rachitsky and Teresa Torres
  5. A short, practical field guide to customer discovery: who to talk to, how to find them, and how many. Pairs perfectly with The... talkingtohumans.com Book · ~80 pages (free PDF available) Talking to Humans Giff Constable
  6. A step-by-step guide to running discovery when you have almost no data, aimed squarely at first-time founders. It is practical... First Round Review Article · 15 min read A Founder's Guide for Successful Early-Stage Customer Discovery Jeanette Mellinger
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