Tool

Respondent

Respondent.io Freemium Intermediate

This is the practical way to act on the route around your inner circle entirely part of your short answer: it is a marketplace of verified strangers, including in India, who you can screen and pay for a real interview. It is worth using once you have exhausted your own network or specifically want a harsher, unfiltered opinion from someone with no reason to be kind to you.

  • Screen and recruit verified strangers by role or behavior instead of relying on your own contacts
  • Paying participants a fair rate removes the social debt that makes people soften their answers
  • Useful specifically when you want feedback from someone with zero relationship to you
Open on respondent.io ↗

It answers 2 questions

  1. How do I get honest answers when the person I'm interviewing is a friend or someone in my network?
  2. How do I recruit and interview my competitor's customers without it getting weird or them shutting down?

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. A YC partner turns 'talk to users' into a repeatable 5-question interview script you can use this afternoon. It's The Mom Test... YC Startup Library Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky (YC / founder of Pebble)
  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. Wilcox gives you a literal five question script built entirely around a recent problem, not your product, which is exactly the... Justin Wilcox, Customer Development Labs Essay How I Interview Customers Justin Wilcox
  6. 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
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