by Brant | Apr 10, 2019 | Innovation, Startup
“Feedback” is a loaded word. Asking for it in the wrong way not only will result in poor information, it can actually hurt your business because more often than not it’s predicated on opinions and not actual facts. Bad feedback sends you in wrong directions, provides false positives, and false negatives.
So how does one get valuable, actionable input from users, potential customers, and other stakeholders?
Focus on insights, not feedback.
Understanding the problem
Filtered.ai is a Techstars startup led by CEO Paul Bilodeau and Derek Bugley, whom I had the good fortune of mentoring as part of the 2018 Techstars Anywhere cohort.
Filtered got its start as a data science consulting firm trying to solve their own recruiting problems. Seeking to hire software developers, they received hundreds of unqualified resumes from recruiters. In response, they developed a simple coding test to be used as a filter.
Their minimum viable product (MVP) immediately paid dividends. Recruiters could only send resumes of engineers who achieved a specific score on the test, dramatically cutting the time and cost of recruiting new developers.
by Brant | Jan 15, 2018 | Innovation, Lean Innovation, Startup
feedback (fēdˈbăkˌ)
n.
The return of a portion of the output of a process or system to the input, especially when used to maintain performance or to control a system or process.
Feedback is not what people think it is. Originally, feedback is an electronic signal received in response to an electronic output. The signal received back can help determine if the outbound signal was “right” or received properly. Today, the term can be applied to non-electronic and non-automated processes, too.
Feedback is good for improving or correcting a process. It’s not good for measuring the impact of the process. Feedback on a product feature, for example, may tell you if it works as expected, but not if the feature contributes to some larger desired outcome. If you want to know about the desired outcome, you have to ask explicitly for that.
by Brant | May 23, 2009 | Startup
Customer Development must be tailored to what type of business you are and where you are as a business. All businesses, not just Internet-based ones, can benefit from customer development principles, but the ease/difficulty varies quite a bit depending on product, business model, and your knowledge of the market, etc.
Clearly an Internet based product has advantages both in terms of customer development and fast-iteration product development, over software applications. I’ll go out on a limb here and rank difficulty based on product type this way:
b2c internet -> b2b internet -> b2c software -> b2b software -> hardware
No great revelation here. I’m going out another limb and say the significance of customer development increases as you go from left to right, while the significance of fast-iteration product development runs from right to left. This is not to diminish applying both principles as much as possible in all cases, but that the nature of the product determines which will predominate.
Products toward the left are less expensive to develop and deploy and customer learning is more inherent in their nature. The cost/failure is lower. If you haven’t practiced customer development principles, e.g., interviewing customers about a particular issue’s pain level, you will learn soon enough whether your product solves a real problem. Practicing Eric Ries’ lean startup principles can serve in lieu of practicing some of the customer development steps. Further, many assumptions are actually facts. IMVU’s customers are online. They can be reached online, they use web sites to learn about products, they reference online users who are similar to themselves, and they buy online. You don’t have to interview your online customers to determine those basic facts as you must for other product types.
by Brant | May 5, 2009 | Lean Innovation, Startup
I’ve been working in technology for a pretty long time, having weaved my way along an illuminating path through development, IT, project management, product management, product marketing, marketing and executive leadership. The two key principles that tie the...
by Brant | Apr 21, 2009 | Startup
Concise – Use the minimum number of words required to describe an idea. Precise – Don’t be wishy-washy. Know your strategy, know your customers. Your numbers should add up. State assumptions and be prepared to defend them. Entice – Short and...
by Brant | Apr 1, 2009 | Startup
Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) was an American Architecture and Literary critic, as well as Sociologist and Philosopher. I often attribute a particular quote to Mumford, though I can’t seem to locate the source. When asked where to put a sidewalk, Mumford responds:...
