Common Interview Mistakes

In Idea Generation, you talked to a few customers. While it was helpful to see if your idea survived the first contact with customers, you probably did not get the most out of those interviews as you could have. Here are the mistakes we typically see beginner interviewers make and why they're so deceptive:

• Being too needy: "Do you think this is a good idea?" "Would you use this?" Most people want to avoid hurting your feelings, especially if they can tell that you're invested in a particular answer. They'll tell you what they think you want to hear. The key here is sticking to questions about their problems and experiences as opposed to asking them to critique your idea.
• Being too pitchy: This happens when you spend most of the conversation talking about your idea and why it's better than anything else out there. It's tough not to talk about your idea when you have a customer in front of you. As a founder, you are no doubt passionate about what you're working on, but our goal in this conversation is to learn, not sell. The customer should be talking much more than you. We struggle with this one!
• Failing to dig: This happens when you don't follow up with "why's" whenever the customer gives a response. There's an art to interviewing, especially in terms of how to follow up on people's responses. It might feel awkward to keep asking why, but in many cases, you won't get to their actual reason for doing something until you add a few more why's. And given the work you have invested in setting up an interview, you'll want to make sure you make the most of it.
• Outsourcing the interview: We frequently meet first-time founders who think that customer interviews are not important enough or too specialized for them to do. Instead, they try to outsource it by hiring designers, researchers, or even interns who choose to spend their time on the product, sales, or strategy. However, you're the person with the most context and the most information. Something offhanded that the customer says could be irrelevant to your designer but the inspiration for a completely different direction for you as a founder. In the later stages of company building, you will not be doing all of the customer interviews. However, we do encourage even later-stage founders to integrate customer interviews into their routine by doing a couple every week or month.
• False Affirmation: As a founder, we crave those affirmations of our ideas, especially if we hear them from a potential customer. Be careful not to make the mistake of taking any affirmation from the customer as confirmation that you have found your early adopter and validated your idea. People generally want to tell you how much they like your idea and how they will buy your product when you're interviewing them because it's a comfortable and friendly thing to do. It's essential not to take them at their word; you need to learn instead to ignore opinions.

Common Founder Questions

How many people should I interview?

The ideal number of customer interviews depends on the type of customer you're looking to serve. For now, though, whether B2B or B2C, we recommend aiming for at least five a week. Experienced founders end up doing that many a day during the discovery phase.

For B2B businesses serving enterprise-level customers who generally pay thousands or millions to solve their problems, you might struggle to meet this number, as there are fewer businesses than there are consumers. Usually, the B2B sales process will require many stakeholders, and in the beginning, you can cast a wide net and talk to any one of these stakeholders rather than just the decision-makers. This strategy will also help you become more informed before you make your way to that key decision-maker.

For B2C businesses serving general consumers who typically pay up to one hundred or one thousand dollars to solve their problems, you will want to talk to a lot more people. We recommend starting with the customer segment you think is most likely to be your early adopter and interviewing a minimum of five people in that customer persona a week.

What if my product requires multiple customers?

If your product is a marketplace or B2B product that requires two or three different types of customers, you MUST interview all of them. Frequently, we see founders doing several interviews with one key customer group because they're more accessible, but none with the other key customer group, even though both are essential to their business opportunity.

How should I take notes during an interview?

Interviews are typically more comfortable if you can do them in pairs: one person can ask the questions while the other one acts as a notetaker. But in many cases, you probably won't have a co-interviewer available, or you may decide that a conversation feels more natural one-on-one.