Hey PH ๐,
I'm Daniel Ch: /r/SaaS moderator, founder, etc.
First of all, big big shoutout to @5harath for being so lovely to hunt this ๐งก He's truly practising what he's preaching and a genuine person wanting the betterment of the communities. Mad respect.
I've previously tested tested an idea on Twitter (in typical 'talk to your users' validation fashion) and on subreddits: live examples of 'Talk to your users'
The feedback seemed interesting, so... I am now launching it!
๐ญ What's the idea?
I record (with consent) conversations with users. People that are/will/were users of my product.
Why?
๐ฌ Situation:One of the top advice bits in the startup/product world is: talk to your users.
PG said it multiple times, but double-stressed it by saying: Half the advice I give to startups is some form of "talk to your customers."
And then there's The Mom Test: a book about how 'learning if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you'.
Derrick Reimer's very personal (a nod to his courage!) position is the latest example I've read about how talking to people can mislead you. Why? If not done right, you harm yourself more than help yourself.
๐ซ Problem: Ok, any practical examples? I don't mean theory, I mean me listening to founder X talk to user Y. With good and bad examples
โโ
๐ฎ My solution (you will learn)
I'm doing this: recording my conversations with users. You will learn:
- If I do a good job, you'll learn from these public examples, how to do it
- If I do a bad job, we'll see my progress. And I expect people to point out to me if, despite reading post-mortems and books, I am still sabotaging myself with the questions I ask. You will at least learn how not to do it
- How does it sound when a founder UNCOVERS a product idea out of a convo?
- How do you do it well?
- How to NOT do it?
- How does it feel when there's an AHA moment for the founder?
- Where's a live example of asking for validation?
- Where's a live example of non-leading questions?
- How tf do you even start the conversation? Do you reveal your idea at the beginning/mid/end?
- And hey... really now โ how does a useless conversation sound like?
The last thing I need to clarify is:
๐ข What product will I talk about?
The answer is: I don't fully know. I'm as of now building PriceUnlock.com, a tool that helps SaaS founders find&set the perfect pricing for their tool.
But maybe due to the conversations, we'll see a pivot. Or two. Or maybe it'll all go well and I'll just 'talk to my users' about future features. Who knows where this takes us? But I'm launching today with 6 episodes:
โ Talk with Chris Lu, founder of CopyAI - they recently hit $1.2M ARR and raised $2.9M
โ Talk with Samy Dindane, founder of Hypefury, who's recently passed $20K/mo MRR
โ Talk with Arvid Kahl, author of 2 books (recently launched The Embedded Entrepreneur) and founder of FeedbackPanda (now sold)
โ Talk with Russell Vaughan of GoSquared, who's part of a more mature company โ another segment of the market, explored in my quest of talking to users
โ 2 x "overviews": introspection of the situation+talks so far
I'll just leave you with a picture of me + the closest thing to the 'physical' version of the podcast, just to mark this moment!
P.S: Only for those who wanna be super-supporters and super-friends of this, I've made this form โ just so I can reach you with extra goodies ๐
@chddaniel start here https://medium.com/menlo-office/...
Think about your value proposition:
- facilitate the communications between creators and listeners
- sprinkle it with some statistics and ability to get opt-in from the commentator/listener
Some ideas:
- can you get into the live events and radio shows?
- can you transcribe comments and make them SEO friendly
- can you package a lot of comments into a single digestible format for the creator?
- can you piggy back some of the engagement you have on top of twitter and other social media?
Can't remember the last time when I listened to a 6 min product video/audio but I did it for yours. Really interesting topic and you have an engaging way of talking. Subbed on Spotify๐
This is a key part for every company out there. It's tougher than it seems, so I'm glad you're making it public!
Will put this up as a candidate for our team podcast discussion ๐
Boxmode