Ask HN: What questions to ask potential customers to validate idea? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What questions to ask potential customers to validate idea?

3 pointscodegeek2 comments

So I have been working on a prototype for an idea but have not talked to a single potential customer yet. Seeing the posts on HN about (e.g. how important it is to sell first, build later), I am wondering what kind of questions to ask to engage these potential customers. Some background info:

- THese potential customers could be hiring managers or recruiters in a very niche industry.

- I know these potential customers to an extent that I have dealt with them in the past related to my field.

- I am sure if I get them on the phone/email, most of them will respond.

So how do I go about it ? Any ideas ?

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I'd suggest you go read The Lean Startup, as this is the source for the suggestions on HN.

You validate ideas by applying validated learning:

1. Figure out what you want to learn (ex. an assumption: customers want this product because it allows them to easily do x)

2. Figure out how you will learn via metrics (ex. measure: how many customers sign up based on advertising based on this assumption)

3. Do what is required to gather the metrics. (ex. act: advertise based on the assumption to gather metrics for analyses to validate your assumption).

Sort of sounds like Act/Track/Learn :)

The Lean Startup proposes that you approach a product by asking the following questions:

1. Is this product valuable to my customers?

2. Would customers buy this product?

3. Would customers buy this product from me?

4. Can I build this product?

Point 1 & 2 refer to validating the viability of ideas, while 3 & 4 is more of an introspection regarding availability of skills/resources/advantage etc.

Good luck!

It's quite a large topic, but the different steps could be :

1. formulate the problem of what you're aiming to solve, and the customer segments who you think have this problem (lean canvas / business model canvas can help you there)

2. ask questions to people part of your chosen customer segments and verify they have the problem

3. create a solution (MVP) to solve this problem

4. demo it to them and verify it solves the problem in a way that makes them pay :-)

Ash Maurya goes into a lot of details about this process in "Running Lean" (highly recommended).

The general idea is to test assumptions to convert them from hypotheses to facts, using a loop of build->measure->learn.

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