How To Recruit Participants For B2B User Interviews

“Use your existing customers!” That’s the answer you’ll get when you ask, "how do I recruit participants for user interviews?". Here’s the thing, if you’re in the early stages of an MVP you either don’t have existing customers, or you can’t keep interviewing the same handful of customers you do have. To get customers you need to do the research, but to do the research you need customers; it’s a paradox. Another often recommended segment is friends and family. But we only have so many friends and family within our target customer segment. 

I set out to test four methods for recruiting users for [The User Interview Exchange](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/), a site where founders, product managers, and UX researchers exchange user interviews for free (the meta-ness of doing user interviews for a user interviewing platform is not lost on me). 

![spidermans meme](//images.ctfassets.net/t15p0nh3y83f/3upWWoZ2PyU6GucyoR1wmB/e5b198e9bdddf4a062b3fc3a0d352644/spidermans_meme.jpg)

## Four User Interview Recruiting Methods That Aren’t Your Customers, Family, Or Friends

### 1. Forums where your target market hangs out
__Where I looked:__ My (hypothesized) target is founders, product managers, and UX researchers so I quickly dreamed up the forums where these folks hang out. I came up with Reddit, IndieHackers, StartupSchool, HackerNews, and Discord. 

__What I learned:__ Seeking users on forums is a give and take. When I wandered over to Reddit and posted into three subreddits where my target market lives (r/ProductManagement, r/entrepreneur, r/Startups) my posts were immediately filtered out by the bots because I had not participated enough in the subreddit, had not lived on Reddit long enough, and did not have enough clout (Karma). Much of my time was spent answering questions for folks on each subreddit before I had enough Karma to make a post. Even then I didn’t find any user interviews from Reddit. 

__Where I had the most success:__ I had the most success with [StartupSchool](https://www.startupschool.org/). I attribute the success to three things: 1. The first person publicly commented saying that he would be willing to chat. This public offer gave a bit of validation to the others. 2. It’s a super supportive community meant for things like this. 3. I offered to give back by playing the role of a customer for others by answering their user interview questions. 

__Cost:__ 8 hours, free

__Result:__ 3 user interviews via video (all 3 from the StartupSchool forum).  

__Best for:__ Those who already know their target market and there is a defined community for this market, those who do not have a budget, and those who have something to give back to the community. 

### 2. Direct cold emailing & messaging
__Where I looked:__ I focused all my efforts here on LinkedIn. For emails, I typed in search terms for my target segment and then used a tool to scrape the email addresses called, [PersistIq](https://www.persistiq.com/). There’s a bunch of tools out there for this, this one just popped up first and it worked well for my purposes. I also signed up for [LinkedIn Sales Navigator](https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/sales-navigator) to send InMail messages.

__What I learned:__ The standard free LinkedIn profile only allows you to view a certain amount of pages of search results for people you are seeking. I hit this limit for the month a few pages in and had to switch to LinkedIn Sales Navigator. I used a free trial for LinkedIn Sales Nav but it normally costs $79/month.

__Where I had the most success:__ The comparison here for me was cold email reachout vs. LinkedIn InMail. In the end, each came out the same. I got one user interview from a direct cold email and one from a cold InMail message. Every message I sent was personalized and a lot of time went into filtering for who might be the perfect person to reach out to.

__Cost:__ 8 hours, free if using LinkedIn Sales Navigator free trial, otherwise $79/month USD.

__Result:__ 2 user interviews via video (1 from direct email out of 8 reached out, 1 from InMail messages out of 17 messages sent).

__Best for:__ If you have a very specific target market. I had more success when I honed in on UX researchers in software firms instead of general product managers and founders. If you already have a CRM full of sales leads you could probably cut out a lot of time that I spent cleaning the list before reaching out. Not to mention that consultants with swoon as you align sales and product.

### 3. Meetups and groups
__Where I looked:__ I already am a part of a video meetup community called [Lunchclub](https://lunchclub.ai/). Lunchclub is meant mostly for networking, but if the person I am matched with is within my target segment, they’ve been more than welcoming as user interviews.

__Cost:__ 30 minutes, free

__Result:__ 3 user interviews via video (important note: the user interviews were not full-fledges user interviews as much as they were nice bonuses of the meetup).

__Best for:__ Those who have something to give back to the community. I asked user interview questions as a bonus rather than the goal of my Lunchclub virtual meetups. If the sole purpose of using a community like Lunchclub is to get user interviews or sell a product, you’ll either be banner or end up with insincere responses. Asking a few questions is fine, but 30-minutes of user interview questions won’t fly. Other communities like Lunchclub that have worked for others include Shapr and Bumble for Business.

### 4. Paid user interview services
__Where I looked:__ The largest paid user interview service is aptly named, [User Interviews](https://www.userinterviews.com/). 

__Cost:__ $620 for the platform (B2B) + $400 incentives = $1,020 for eight 30-minute user interviews in a month ([pricing reference](https://www.userinterviews.com/pricing), [incentive reference](https://www.userinterviews.com/support/incentive-recommendations))

__Result:__ Given that I started The User Interview Exchange, their policy prohibits me from using the service, so I was unable to test the results. My hypothesis is that it works.

__Best for:__ Those who have the budget.

## Combine Methods To Recruit User Interviews
In the end, I ended up getting users from each method but there wasn’t a case where I had a perfect flow of candidates. Considering we generally don’t have weeks to recruit, we should combine each of the methods above to recruit user interviews.

__Important note:__ I ran into several unexpected positive side effects of doing the user recruiting on the cheap for this study. For example, five users who never responded ended up registering for the product, some responded with quick written feedback, and it helped me define my target market. I’ll write about the positive unexpected outcomes in a future post.

### Bonus. Use The User Interview Exchange
__What it is:__ Give a user interview, get a user interview. It's like Craigslist for user interviews: it's ugly but cheap (free) and effective. [Learn more about The User Interview Exchange](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/home). 

__Cost:__ Free.

__Result:__ Almost everyone who posts gets at least one applicant for their user interview. Most get four to five, and those who offer incentives get more than a dozen.

__Best for:__ Those who are willing to be an interviewee to help others develop their product.

An image of Uncle Sam saying, we want you

Uncle Sam recruiting image

How to Evolve Your Organization's UX Research Practice From The Bottom Up

This post provides a map for user experience researchers to facilitate the transition from a retrospective research practice to a proactive one from the bottom up.  

For this post, I talked with a dozen user experience researchers to understand the best practices for embedding user research throughout their organization. The best practices below operate under the assumption that no one in your organization can add a minute to their work; we can only optimize the time we already have. The post walks through tactics for user experience research practices at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced stages.

## For Beginner UX Research Practices

__Symptoms of beginner research practices:__ One or two user experience professionals do everything. The line between UI and UX is blurry, and, in some cases, UX research lives under the design organization. User research is almost always retrospective and always seems to be needed "yesterday." One user researcher told me that his organization started as a beginner. He said, "I was hired by the product team who recognized that they needed a UX research function, but they didn't totally know why."

__The objective for UX researchers in beginner UX research practices:__ Educate the product organization on proactive user research value.

__Tactics for UX researchers in beginner UX research practices:__
UX researchers inside beginner UX research practices are like Stretch Armstrong. They are muscular, but by the time the organization has pulled them in five directions at once, their muscles look a lot more like Gumby's than Hulk Hogan's. I uncovered six tactics that UX researchers have used to make headway from the bottom upward in organizations that need a nudge or two to bulk up their user research practice.
### 1. Get product team-members to observe user research in action.
The solution that worked for nearly every user researcher was getting someone to experience a user research session, even if it's retrospective. In the beginning, getting a CSM or engineer to sit in on one of these sessions may be insurmountable, so start with product team members. Product managers are some of the busiest people in the entire organization, so a tactic one user researcher said he had success with was making it as easy as possible for them to join. He shares the link for every session and asks that the product team member Slack-chat any questions she has during the session. Another user researcher said that she invites the relevant product team members to every session regardless of their calendar availability - she found that they eventually started moving their calendar blocks to sit in on half of these. If an asynchronous observation is required, one user researcher told me that it was simple to splice together key clips from qualitative research he conducted via Dscout's video tools.
### 2. Use coworkers as a sample for user research that you are already conducting.
Most UX researchers in underfunded practices do this today. In addition to getting quick insights, doing these sessions with internal employees helps answer the question, "what would you say you do here?" Close the loop when you complete the study by sharing with each coworker you interviewed how you used her insight to improve a product. One user researcher I spoke with said that he found sales engineers to be a perfect sample because they can act as end-users, and building a relationship with the SEs helps him better understand what the end is saying. 
### 3. Brainwash new hires on the product team.
The saying goes, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. It turns out [that isn't exactly true](https://www.researchgate.net/project/Cognitive-development-and-aging-in-pet-dogs), as proven by the luckiest researchers of all time working for the University of Vienna's Clever Dog Lab (aka the "good boy" lab). That said, it indeed takes about twice as much effort to train old dogs as it does puppies. Okay, your coworkers are not K9s, but the point is that it's going to take significantly more time to change current coworkers' habits than it will be to instill new habits in new hires. One user researcher told me that she sets up meetings with new product team hires and lays out what she can do to help them be successful - highlighting proactive user research tactics. 
### 4. Borrow time in existing meetings to educate the difference between UI and UX and retrospective vs. proactive research. 
If a product team has a regular meeting, ask to present some user research methodologies. This presentation should clearly define the difference and use cases for proactive vs. retrospective user research. One user researcher said he had success pointing out timelines associated with each tactic he presented. For example, "what can be done in one week, in one month, if we had two months." The renowned user researcher, Steve Portigal, uses this same tactic when less mature organizations hire him. If user research is under the design organization, this is the perfect time to cross the divide.
### 5. Solicit feedback from CSMs to build a foundational relationship.
I bet I can categorize your user research practice as a beginner, intermediate, or advanced by asking about your relationship with customer success managers (CSMs). Almost every user researcher I spoke with brought up the UX researcher-CSM relationship. I suspect that the connection to user research maturity is more of a correlation than causation. Still, a healthy relationship is necessary because CSMs tend to treat their customers' time as the precious commodity that it is and, if all goes well, you're going to be asking the CSM for more of their customers' time. Before we can hammer CSMs for contacts, we need to build a baseline relationship. By asking CSMs for their customer's feedback, you 1. get more insight into the problems and concerns that your customers have today, and 2. begin a relationship with CSMs so that they can see you as a problem-solver rather than a renewal risk.
### 6. Set up a simple repo for user research with non-research folks in mind. 
Numerous user researchers told me, "most outside the user research function just want to know the highlights." There are tools like [Consider.ly](https://consider.ly/), [Dovetail](https://dovetailapp.com/), and [EnjoyHQ](https://getenjoyhq.com/enjoyhq-user-research-platform/) that are specifically made for handling and sharing user research, but while your team is small, stick your research in the internal tool that your organization uses already to communicate. For example, one user researcher's organization does a lot of communication via Coda, so he built a space in Coda for user research. [Gitlab's user research repo started on Google Docs](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/07/10/building-a-ux-research-insights-repository/). I recognize that your minutes as an understaffed us research practice are precious, so be comfortable with an MVP approach for this repo - you can iterate or buy a fancy solution later.

## For intermediate UX research practices:

__Symptoms of intermediate research practices:__ UX research is separate from design. The product team understands and advocates for proactive user research. Teams outside product and design (content, engineering, etc.) can't immediately articulate what a user researcher does or why they should care. About three-quarters of user research is retroactive. It's still a pain to get users for user research.

__The objective for UX researchers in intermediate UX research practices:__  Get to a point where almost nothing gets built without customer discovery first, stakeholders eagerly await user research findings but do not rush the process, and coworkers from outside the product org start to reach out to you for help, unprompted. 

__Tactics for UX researchers in intermediate UX research practices:__
UX researchers inside intermediate firms have the product team's full support. But, when you step outside the product organization, it isn't clear to other functions what, as one user research put it, "the people with sticky notes" are doing. Below are five tactics that user researchers can do to evangelize user research to the most prominent user research skeptics: engineers who believe that it will slow down development and customer success managers (CSMs) who calculate your engagement with their customers as a risk rather than an enrichment opportunity. 
### 1. Get engineers and customer success team members to observe user research in action.
If you take nothing else away from this post, I want you to take away that the most successful tool you can use to prove user research's value is to have coworkers observe what you do. It tends to be more straightforward to convince customer success managers to observe user research interactions since they inherently value the opportunity to further understand their customers. Engineering, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. One user researcher said that he was casually chatting with a software engineer who said, "honestly, I build software, but I don't give a shit how they use it." Flash forward, and that engineer watches a user struggle with a malfunctioning component in a live usability session. Before the session was over, he squashed the bug and earned a deeper understanding of how end-users experience his output.
### 2. Elevate research readouts to cross-functional, collaborative, decision-making meetings.
Beth Devine, UX Research Lead for Stack Overflow, shares research as part of a roundtable (dubbed the "Research Roundtable" - inspired by the inspired by King Arthur's "[Knights of the Round Table](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_the_Round_Table)" legend). Devine's Research Roundtable meetings include six leaders from product, design, and engineering. Instead of treating these meetings as a lecture, Devine focuses on using the time to facilitate how the organization can act upon the findings. A couple of user researchers told me they had success using [Miro](https://miro.com/)'s software to collaborate to share and act upon user research findings digitally.
### 3. Use Lunch 'n Learns and Masterclasses to show what user research does.
Lunch 'n Learns, masterclasses, "meet the founders," whatever you call them, most companies have a time where employees across functions meet. One user researcher told me that their research practice started their own "Lunch 'n Learns," where they shared what they do and what they are learning with the broader organization. They have had to add an extra 15 minutes for questions because they consistently ran overtime answering questions from the engaged audience of 150 people from across the organization. Another UX researcher mentioned that they host listening sessions where the product team, a customer success person, a sales executive, and an engineering manager come together to share and reflect on the feedback they hear from their touchpoints. 
### 4. Train product managers to do some user research.
I talked to a few user researchers who echoed the sentiment that "my job is to make my job obsolete." They see themselves more as teachers, librarians, and user research facilitators rather than a siloed function.  One user researcher told me, "I spend a lot of time teaching product managers how to do what I do because the team is so small. I just can't do it all." Another user researcher said that they've set up such efficient systems that, in some cases, it's more efficient for a product manager to recruit users and conduct their own user research for bite-sized retrospective projects than it would be to engage the user research team - which is more focused on discovery research.
### 5. Create an efficient system for recruiting for research.
Agile engineering fears anything that might slow them down, and successful CSMs have a hawkeye on anything that might remind their customers of your product's flaws. As a result, recruiting users needs to thread the needle to be both fast and tactful. The most advanced user research practices have built efficient methods to pull their recruiting list and personalize reach out based on customer data from tools such as Looker and Amplitude. Even in the most mature practices, user researchers stressed that establishing trust with CSM was essential. Even when there was a strong user research-CSM relationship and UX researchers could pull their list of potential users, they wished they had set up a field for "UX do not contact" in their CRM/customer data warehouse before they learned it the hard way.
### 6. Iterate your user research repo solution with product managers as the user profile.
I heard from multiple user researchers that documenting and retrieving past user research is a painful experience. Start with understanding the systems that product managers in your org use to make decisions today and embed a user research repo solution within that flow. For example, one user researcher told me that product managers in their organization use Aha to plan the product roadmap, so they built their repo into Aha.

## For advanced UX research practices:

__Symptoms of advanced research practices:__ Your products lead the market. Almost everything gets built with customer discovery and user stories first. You can fill a study quickly, and people from around the organization can tell you about customer pain-points. 

__The objective for UX researchers in advanced UX research practices:__ User researchers stop doing user research. They spend their time training others to do user research and iterating technological and human systems to enable efficiencies and discovery. 

__Tactics for UX researchers in advanced UX research practices:__
Bear with me; this is about to get a bit "handwavy." The thought of user researchers not doing user research is startling. But, if an advanced user research practice can build efficient systems to collect, analyze, and share user research, then the hump that "product managers are too busy" flattens. If you pair efficient systems with skilled UX research instructors in the organization, product managers can keep their finger on the pulse of what customers are doing, how they are doing it, and what they will need next. Below are three tactics that UX researchers in advanced research practices can use to create an elite user-research-enabled organization.

### 1. Implement, evangelize, and connect a customer feedback management platform to an advanced user research repo.
Customer Feedback Management (CFM) vendors like [Forrester's FeedbackNow](https://www.feedbacknow.com/), [InMoment](https://inmoment.com/), [Medallia](https://www.medallia.com/), and [Qualtrics](https://www.qualtrics.com/) build technology that centralizes structured and unstructured customer feedback from digital and physical touchpoints. Most CFM vendors have realized that a lot of the best customer feedback comes from frontline workers; in other words, CSMs and account executives now have a place to share their customers' feedback. Pair a CFM with an advanced user research repo, and you've got a powerhouse user research platform. The biggest challenge with CFMs and research repos is keeping them up-to-date; fortunately, as a user research evangelist in an advanced user research practice, your full-time job is to share the importance of why we do this and how to get the flywheel whirring. 
### 2. Schedule non-users to come in every month, no matter if you have something planned or not.
Most researchers I spoke with talked about how they talk to current users, but few brought up their process of regularly talking to non-users. One UX researcher I spoke with said that when he was in a well-funded fintech startup, they would have users come in for user research monthly. "Sometimes, it would be the day before, and we wouldn't have anything planned. We would have to scramble to put something together, but in the end, it was always worth it."
### 3. Serve user research deliverables in multiple mediums.
There is no standard way that everyone consumes user research. Some want to watch the video from an entire study while they wait for their bus, some prefer the audio so that they can listen on their drive into work, and others want to read the transcripts. Most like a polished blurb of the finding; others want to see the dirty details. With human guidance, tech can slice and dice the same research to feed a "headless" user research distribution platform. 

stairs upward

Accelerators and Investors - Stop Telling Founders to do 100 User Interviews

Accelerators and investors, I think I know why you tell founders to go out and do 100 user interviews. You want the founder to 1. improve and show their ability to hit the pavement and do sales, and 2. find product-market fit. To be clear, telling founders to read The Mom Test and do user interviews is fantastic advice. User interviews help founders improve their sales skills, better define their target market, understand if there is a significant need for what they have, and get better at storytelling. The problem isn't that you are recommending that founders do user interviews. The problem is that you're asking founders to do 100 user interviews. 

Today, user interview recruiting, especially when you don't have any customers, is either expensive or time-consuming. Chances are the founders you are rejecting are early on in their product and several iterations away from something customers need. Doing two rounds of eight formal user interviews, synthesizing the user stories into product requirements, and iterating the product (or a pivot of the product) is more time and cost-efficient than one big round of user interviews.

Here's what I think you should say instead:

## 1. Do eight user interviews and solve the biggest user concern in your product. Then do eight more and solve the most significant user concern from those. Then, please send me your notes from both rounds.

There are two essential parts of the recommendation above: 1. Product development is an eternal cycle. By recommending that founders do user eight interviews and iterate the product from those recommendations, founders embed user research into their processes on an ongoing basis rather than on a once-in-a-lifetime or once-a-year basis. 2. Asking founders to send you their notes is like when a teacher asks you to show your work on a test. Founders who think they will be sharing the notes will take more detailed notes and be more methodical in their approach and why they are doing the task. I can't tell you the number of times I've wanted to dig into my user interview notes only to find that I got the interview's ethos but neglected the details. When I do these for a superior or client, I always capture those details.

## 2. Spend two days making cold calls. Then, please write a blog on the experience and send it to me. 

One of the reasons you're asking for 100 user interviews is to test founders' sales skills. But there is a better way. Cold calling sucks. As a technical founder, I'd rather stay up 24 hours straight coding a new feature than spend four hours cold calling. If you're testing the founder's sales determination, go right at it with this ask. For the same reasons above, ask for evidence, even if you never read it. 

Finally, please keep recommending that founders read The Mom Test. When I ask people where they first heard that they needed to do user interviews, the number one answer is in an entrepreneurship, user experience, or product development course. The second is from The Mom Test. I believe in the power of user interviews, and from the sounds of it, you do too; but 100 is not nearly as helpful as two rounds of eight.

San francisco at night

7 Reasons Founders Should Do User Interviews More Frequently

Putting our heads down and building as fast as possible without user feedback is like walking up to the golf tee box on our first outing of the year with a 1-driver and expecting to land 250 yards straight down the fairway. It's technically possible, but ninety-nine times out of one-hundred, the ball will fly out of the tee box, crack into a tree 80 yards away, and forever be lost to the golf gods, leaving us in the same spot and a lost stroke.

As a technical founder, I know firsthand how easy and fulfilling it is to put our heads down and drive at a product for weeks on end. Seeing a new feature come to life that solves a problem we have personally struggled with is an unparalleled feeling; moreover, the visual evidence of output feels like we're making progress. 

If we don't spend a significant portion of time conducting user interviews, we end up with a product that we:

1. Spent five months longer to launch
2. Don't know who to sell it to 
3. Don't know how to sell it
4. Don't know how to market it
5. Have no idea how to price it
6. Can't explain it well to investors
7. Have no way of getting feedback for it

Founders like us can avoid the six pitfalls above by conducting user interviews in the customer discovery phase. Below are six reasons why founders should conduct user interviews for customer discovery.

__User interviews help founders:__

## 1. Launch faster
Especially at the beginning of a startup, time is a scarce resource. The faster we launch, the quicker we can get feedback on our product and make improvements or pivot. Launching faster is the most apparent reason to conduct user interviews. By conducting user interviews for customer discovery, founders can prioritize the first feature that solves a problem. We feel confident launching a very minimum viable product because we know that the minimum solves one thing. 

## 2. Define a precise market
Often we start by solving a problem we encountered in the past, so we need to find everyone else like us, right? Wrong. Who we sell to and who uses the product is often very different. Just as necessary, who we sell to at the very beginning, and who we sell to years into the work, is often different. Finally, the keyword here is precise. Who are the personas that we leave a user interview and feel the overwhelming sense of, "they get it!" What do they do? Where do they do it (country, company size, industry, etc.) I've had success in the past, asking the question, "How did you first learn that you needed to do x?" 

Here's an example of what I learned in the first round of user interviews for The User Interview Exchange (UIX). I hypothesized a target market would be perfect for UIX was startup founders in the customer discovery phase. What I learned doing user interviews was that founders don't know what user interviews are or what customer discovery is. On multiple occasions, I heard that they only started doing user interviews after an accelerator rejected them, or an advisor shared The Mom Test book with them. Those who did them from the outset learned to do them from instructors in an entrepreneurship or UX course. In other words, selling to founders is an uphill battle. My target to sell to is accelerators, advisors of startups, and instructors, even if founders are the end-users. 

## 3. Learn how to sell the product
Fancy folks call this partner or channel marketing. User interviews help us discover the precise moment our target market finds the problem and how they acquire the goods, services, and technologies we provide. 

In a B2B business, are there specific platforms that we need to integrate into (i.e., CRMs, ERPs, procurement platforms)? Perhaps there are certain industry groups where our target hangs out. In B2C, what's that moment that someone first felt they needed to, for example, improve their credit score. Asking the follow-up questions, "why did you decide to solve the problem that way?" and "do you remember where you were when you did x?"  helps uncover some of these answers in user interviews.

Listening closely to the keywords our target market uses when they talk about their workflow and the solutions they use today gives us a leg up when we sell the product. We come across as more authentic when we empathize with potential customers. Not to mention the confidence in responding to common concerns. I find using the keywords my target market uses builds street cred.

## 4. Learn how to market the product
If we know where our customers hang out, we can start to understand where we should advertise. We also know the keywords our target segment uses when they encounter the issue.

A perfect example of this is writing SEO-generating content. After doing a dozen user interviews, I walk away with a dozen questions and the long-tailed phrases my target segment uses; it's SEO gold. Targeting only the most critical and relevant keywords and platforms optimizes our customer acquisition costs (CAC) - investors eat that up.

## 5. Determine how to price the product
Two of the [7 Questions To Ask In A User Interview](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/blog/7-questions-to-ask-in-a-user-interview) help get at this. Combining responses from the questions: "How much did you pay for that?" and: "How much time did that take?" gives us a general direction about how much we should ask for the product at the outset. Those two questions also provide us with insight into our competitors and what we should price. User interviews help us uncover the most significant pain points in a customer journey - that's where the value is. 

## 6. Explain the product to investors
The chances are slim that an investor has personally experienced the problem we are solving, so it's essential that we clearly explain the problem we solve and color in the lines with a user story. If we do a dozen user interviews, we should walk away with two dozen stories we can confidently share with investors. If every response to an investor's question involves: 1. How we have thought about, already solve this, or why we decided not to focus on it, 2. A well-structured data point, and 3. A "for example" user story, we feel confident in our response, and the investor has more confidence in us. 

## 7. Get the first users
The sneaky bonus side-effect of user interviews is that even though we are specifically not selling, sometimes the folks we're interviewing are so encouraged by the solution that they become our first users. If we find that they are not the right target market, they can sometimes offer us someone in their network. The first 25 users of UIX were a result of user interviews I conducted. 

Sign up for [The User Interview Exchange](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/) and get your first user interview today.

Person looking at whiteboard

7 Questions To Ask In A User Interview

The devil is in the details, or, rather, the follow-ups when conducting user interviews for customer discovery. That said, there are about seven questions that I find a way to ask in almost every user interviews that I lead.  

1. Tell me about the last time you did x.
2. Why do you do x?
3. How much did you pay for that?
4. How long did that take?
5. What question haven't I asked that I should be asking?
6. Who else should I speak to?
7. Do you have any concerns we haven't addressed yet?

## 1. Tell me about the last time you did x.
Ok, not technically a question, but I could't bear to leave this one out. As a user interviewer, our job is to collect sincere, vivid, and emotional customer stories, so I almost always start with this question. It's so much more useful to ask about the last time a user did something rather than how a user "normally" does x because it gets the nitty-gritty details that we don't think about when describing how we "normally" do things. Even if what the user did the last time was an outlier, we get to find out why it was an outlier. 

If we're in the customer discovery phase for a new low-code platform for teachers, and we ask a teacher, "How do you normally share lesson plans with your students?" She might respond with, "I send it via email each day". On the other hand, if we ask, "Tell me about the last time you shared a lesson plan with students."? We are much more likely to receive a response closer to, "I logged into Blackboard, found the email list of each class, uploaded the pdf of the assignment and sent it out to each class individually." We now have so much more to dig into; what's Blackboard? How does it work? Why do you use PDFs?

## 2. Why do you do x?
User interviews can be gold when we get to the heart of why users do what they do. It sounds effortless to ask, but I miss it sometimes when I assume the answer is so incredibly apparent that I don't need to ask it all. Don't fall into the same trap I do; when I ask, why do you do that? About a quarter of the time, I hear something I didn't expect to hear or additional context that leads to the next great question. 

I was conducting a user interview for The User Interview Exchange, and I asked an expert user experience professional why they do user interviews. I heard many of the same answers that I've heard so many times before, but I learned that they like to have members from the content marketing team take notes on the interviews so that the content team can better empathize with their target segment and ultimately write content that solves underlying issues their customers have. It was a brilliant tidbit I had experienced but not intentionally pursued before.

## 3. How much did you pay for that?
Rob Fitzpatrick talks about this question a lot in his book, [The Mom Test](http://momtestbook.com/). The key is getting comfortable asking the question. Some hate talking about money, but it's essential to ask about it because it helps you understand how much customers might be willing to spend on your product. Rob Fitzpatrick points out that this question gives you an eye into who holds the purse strings for buying your product. Anyone who has tried to sell a product to software developers has probably learned this. 

If you ask someone, "how much did you pay for that?" and they respond with, "I don't know, my manager pays for it," it's probably a good time to start talking to those managers. One example of this is that developers hate paying for anything. Do you know who doesn't mind paying for things if it's helpful? The people that manage overworked developers and need to offload some work. Also, marketers who would rather buy plug-and-play platforms than jockey for developer time. 

## 4. How long did that take?
If someone has a real problem today, chances are they've already taken some steps to solve it. Sometime's they've found a way to achieve it for free or very cheap. Asking, "how long did that take?" is a great way to understand how important the problem and how much it needs solving. For example, if someone spent an hour solving this problem, it might not be worth it.

The other day I was conducting a user interview with an expert user experience professional. I asked him to tell me about the last time he sought out users to interview. He told me that he used $200 worth of Facebook ads to drive users to a Google Forms landing page, where he filtered the users and picked the best options. He then scheduled each, conducted the interviews, and sent them each a $50 Amazon Gift card. All in all, $600 for eight user interviews is not a bad deal. Then I asked, "how long did that process take?". The Facebook, Google Forms, vetting, scheduling, and gift card follow-up took about two days. Not an astronomical amount of time, but if you're a senior UX professional in the U.S., that's about $1,400 worth of time. Recruiting didn't cost $200; it cost closer to $1,600. In my research, I've found that time cost is one reason agencies have a tough time selling user interview research to clients, even if they know it's vital. If an agency bills at $200/hr, it'll be thousands of dollars to do a proper round of user interview research; lots of that money is recruiting or (more likely) the outsourcing to a service like [User Interviews](https://www.userinterviews.com/). 

## 5. What question haven't I asked that I should be asking?
Before UIX, I researched digital strategies for corporations. As part of our research, we interviewed digital executives in firms across the globe. "What question haven't I asked that I should be asking" was my favorite question to ask. One of the user interviews' strengths is the ability to pull off the blinders of our own experiences and immerse us in others' experiences. This question is a fantastic way to strip our biases and ask questions that may never have made it to our list.

## 6. Who else should I speak to?
This question can be gold for two reasons. 1. It's an excellent way to understand markets whom you may not have sought out before for user interviews, and 2. you may get a referral to your next user interview. 

In 2018, I researched what corporations should do when the next recession hits and was mostly interviewing CX and UX folks on strategies to respond to their customer's when it comes. When I asked, "who else should I be speaking to?"; an interviewee recommended that I get in touch with someone in the digital advertising sector. Before long, I had spoken to a half dozen digital advertising execs that had held their clients' hands during the 2008 recession; their effect and collaboration with non-marketing teams during times of crisis was much more significant than I had expected.

## 7. Do you have any concerns we haven't addressed yet?
I've found that asking about concerns is more effective than saying, "what's keeping you from signing up" or "why won't you sign up." This question is a perfect way to uncover potential marketing headlines (if you have solved the problem but haven't made it clear enough) or clarify the product as sometimes interviewees turn into customers. 

Now that you know some great questions to ask, I recommend implementing these within the user interview template, [here](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/blog/user-interview-template). 


Questions image

What Is A User Interview?

A user interview is a form of one-to-one customer research where one person asks open-ended questions to discover how the other person solves specific problems today.  

Good, open-ended questions that interviewers ask during user interviews are:
- Tell me about the last time you did x?
- Can you tell me a little bit more about why you did that?
- How did you feel when you did x?

Founders, product managers, and user experience professionals generally conduct user interviews within the customer discovery phase of product development. In other words, when the product or business is nascent, preparing for a pivot, or is developing a roadmap. That said, successful agile companies regularly conduct user interviews throughout the product lifecycle to integrate continuous feedback into their product. One user experience expert explained that he had success in the past by conducting user interviews every four to six weeks, regardless of the product's progress since the previous set of user interviews. 

A user interview lasts between 15 and 45-minutes. Typically, businesses do somewhere between five and twelve of these with their target market before moving forward. That said, one product manager told me that her team conducted dozens of user interviews when they were setting the product roadmap for the upcoming year. In my experience, doing eight user interviews is generally good for a short sprint of feedback before building the next iteration.

## Here's An Example of the First Few Minutes of a User Interview:

Software engineer Sarah has hypothesized that many restaurants are not adequately equipped to handle online ordering and thinks she might be able to help by building a new platform where restaurants can host ordering experiences on their website rather than paying expensive fees to Uber Eats and Grubhub (this). Before Sarah quits her job and creates the platform, she knows that she needs to talk to some local restaurant owners to see if this is a problem. She walks into her local bakery and asks bakery-owner Bob for 20-minutes of his time to answer some questions she has. Fortunately, Bob agrees, and they sit down at a table in the back of the bakery to chat.

__Software Engineer Sarah:__ Thanks for your time today; I appreciate it. I'm conducting research for a product that I think might be able to help restaurants like yours. Can you tell me a little bit about the last time someone ordered online?

__Bakery Bob:__ Sure thing, it was just a few moments ago. I got an alert on our POS system that someone ordered a loaf of sourdough.

__Sarah:__ That's cool; do you know how the user ordered the loaf?

__Bob:__ Probably Uber Eats; that's where most of our online orders originate.

__Sarah:__ Can you tell me a little bit about your Uber Eats partnership?

__Bob:__ On one hand, we get way more orders because people seem to prefer it to calling in, but Uber takes a significant margin on every order, so we're hardly making any money on orders from Uber.

__Sarah:__ What kind of a margin does Uber take?

__Bob:__ I think it's 30% on every order. 

__Sarah:__ Have you ever asked or had any conversations with Uber about the margin?

__Bob:__ I've called them a couple of times, but they say it's standard and they won't change it for me. 

__Sarah:__ I went to your website and noticed that you don't have online ordering on your site. May I ask, why is that?

__Bob:__ Honestly, we paid an agency a couple of years ago to build the site, and it took them ten months and cost so much that we just don't have the time or money right now to invest in a new website. 

...

__What Sarah Did Well:__

1. Sarah asked open-ended questions such as, "can you tell me a little bit about "Can you tell me a little bit about the last time someone ordered online?"

2. She asked follow-up questions to dig deeper and get specific details, even if she thought she knew the answer.

3. She was starting to get to the heart of why Bob decided to partner with Uber Eats and some of the concerns he had with having his own online ordering system.

Now that you have an idea of what a user interview is, I recommend understanding [how to conduct an effective user interview](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/blog/how-to-conduct-qualitative-user-interviews). The post goes into way more detail than the brief example above.


What is a user interview

Use This Template To Structure Your Next User Interview

__Who this is for:__ Founders, product managers, and UX researchers conducting user research to guide the development of new or improved products.

__Why this exists:__ Too frequently I see founders and product managers start with a solution and then ask for feedback on it (UX researchers tend to get this right). This doesn’t work. As one user interviewee told me recently, “When I first conducted user interviews all I learned was that everyone loves your product if you ask stupid questions”. 

## Template

Download the template I start with when creating questions for a new set of user interviews.

[User interview template](https://assets.ctfassets.net/t15p0nh3y83f/CeL5x9np6vyuBk73RwAV3/afb00c3a7580ec049bd72011a9bcbf19/user_interview_template.xlsx)

## Filled-Out Example

[Download this example to see what my notes look like for a typical user interview.](https://assets.ctfassets.net/t15p0nh3y83f/20Z7GcDwGyHeUK8D1ZQafZ/892c2c0baaa8e7d591788a0f198931cf/example_user_interview_notes.xlsx)

## How I Use The Template For User Interviews

Here’s how I break up a 30-minute user interview:

__1. Background and rapport-building [5 minutes]__

A successful qualitative user interview should be sincere, vivid, and emotional. To achieve all three of these you need to build a solid foundation with your interviewee. When I'm on the other end of user interviews, I can always tell how experienced the interviewer is by how much they ask about me at the beginning. Experts spend more time getting to know me. We do this to build rapport and understand more about the segment we’re interviewing. For example, in my research, I’ve found that the role of a product manager varies so much between a large and small firms that they’re two completely different segments. Another thing I try to do is earn confidence from the interviewee by proving that I’m well prepared. For example, if I see that the user recently switched roles, or we have a shared connection or interest, I’ll sneak that into this portion.

Don’t ask: Nothing. Don't skip this part. You’re about walk the tightrope between interrogation and interview; if you don’t build rapport early on, you’ll plummet into interrogation territory.

Do ask: Can you tell me a little about your role as a Product Manager at Acme Group?

__2. Detailed story-collecting questions [20 minutes] __

A successful user interview is one where you, as the interviewer, walk away with a collection of vivid stories. As humans, we don’t recognize issues until we talk about specific scenarios and we tend to be terrible at predicting how we will respond to future scenarios. The key to parseing these out is the follow-up questions you ask. One rule of thumb I use is the rule of five whys; try following up a user’s response with “why” until you’ve reached the core of a problem. 

Don’t ask: What problems do you encounter when you do x?

Do ask: Tell me about the last time you did x.

__3. Product questions [3 minutes]__

Once I’ve collected some stories, if I have time, I’ll spend a few minutes describing the hypothesized product and asking questions about it. One of the best things you can do here is to parse out the expectations from the customer; that’s where the gold is. For example, I’ll give a somewhat vague description of the product, and the customer will say, “so does the thing do y”? Which is the perfect time to ask, “would you like it to do y? Why?” Another great question is, “what did you expect?” For example, a user sent me the following email the other day, “I signed up but I’m not quite sure if I was doing it correctly?” My response: “May I ask a question? What did you expect to see that you didn’t?” Turns out, the user expected to see a note that they would get notified when they got a match. During this portion, I'll usually ask questions on a one to ten scale because it forces the customer to examine why they gave a certain rating to something and parses out their hesitations to use the product. 

Don’t ask: The product does x, would you use it?

Do ask: On a scale of 1 (not likely at all) to 10 (very likely) how likely would you be to use the product? Why? On a scale of 1 (not likely at all) to 10 (very likely), how likely would you be to use the product if it did x? Why?

__4. Flywheel-building questions [2 minutes]__

By now you’ve built rapport, have some user stories, and the user has a sense of what you’re working on. My favorite questions to ask here are: is there anything I haven’t asked that you think I should be asking? And: do you have any other concerns that we haven’t already talked about? On average, two out of eight respondents will have a question here; when they do it is usually gold because it uncovers something huge that I’ve neglected. Finally, I ask if there’s anyone else that I should be interviewing. This question helps open our blinders to new segments and sometimes leads to a referral for the next user interview.

Don’t ask: Anything else?

Do ask: Is there anything I haven’t asked that I should be asking? Do you have any concerns that haven’t been brought up yet? Is there anyone else that you think I should be interviewing for this research?

For more information on this topic, I discuss how to conduct a user interview in the blog post, [How To Conduct Qualitative User Interviews For Customer Discovery](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/blog/how-to-conduct-qualitative-user-interviews).


An image of a lego guide with a map and compass

Lego guide

How To Conduct Qualitative User Interviews For Customer Discovery

The output of a perfect qualitative user interview looks a lot like a Moth story. If you’re not familiar, The Moth is a storytelling series where anyone can put their name in a hat and wait until they are chosen to bare deeply personal stories to a small audience. 

The most memorable story is of a woman accidentally locking herself in her bathroom while alone in her house. She described with excruciating detail every moment leading up to the locking of the door and every thought that popped into her head each second that she was locked in the bathroom. By the end of the story, it was as if we had been sitting beside her on the cold floor of the bathroom. We empathized with her because we could paint ourselves inside that very same sandalwood-green bathroom experiencing the feeling of complete lonely helplessness. 

Told one way, the problem is being locked in a bathroom and the solution is a key for the door. Told her way, the solution is finding someone to be there for her on the other side of the door.

When conducting qualitative user interviews for customer discovery it is your job is to collect and retell stories like the woman stuck on the bathroom floor. Just like in successful Moth stories, successful user interviews are sincere, vivid, and emotional stories that help you empathize the heart of the user's problem.

## How to collect sincere, vivid, and emotional, customer stories for customer discovery

Almost no one hits all three qualities when conducting qualitative user interviews; I certainly miss some from time to time. However, if you’re a professional story-collector and you’ve got a solid pipeline of eight sincere users then you can stop reading now.

![Venn diagram of pro user interviews and those who have a pipeline](//images.ctfassets.net/t15p0nh3y83f/1EeHYDqjtuaaENAvEntBiU/f19af31307e61937dd02e04e27528576/venn_diagram.png)

Now that we’ve gotten rid of the liars, let’s dissect a journey to conduct eight sincere, vivid, and emotional qualitative interviews.

### 1. Start with a sincere sample and then foster it:
Here’s a secret: Finding a sincere sample for your first round of customer discovery interviews is either expensive or time-consuming. 

The reality is that it’s hard to find a sincere sample, and it’s why everyone doesn’t do it when they should. But, if you neglect the sincerity of the sample, you’ll be more likely to end up with dull, emotionless facts rather than vivid, emotion-filled customer epics. I recently conducted a user interview and heard this very same feedback. The user told me, “In the past, I’ve used services that connect me with people for user interviews, but I just ended up getting professional test-takers who kind of know the game. They give pretty much the same generic feedback, take their check, and move on”. I started The User Interview Exchange to solve this, but the nature of UIX is to be a diving board, not the swimming pool.

The quick answer to finding a sincere sample is asking the right questions to existing customers, friends, family, and coworkers in your target segment. But, if you can’t get [eight](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/blog/how-many-qualitative-user-interviews-is-enough) sincere users from those groups, I studied four alternative methods for getting external user interviews in your target market. I wrote about it [here](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/blog/how-to-recruit-participants-for-b2b-user-interviews). 

It doesn’t end with the sample. If you don’t foster a relationship at the beginning of the interview, you’ll never get the user to open up down the line. I invest the first five minutes of an interview just to get to know the person. If it’s a B2B user interview, usually it’s as easy as providing an open and welcoming introduction about who you are, how much you value their time, and asking, “tell me a little about your role and what you’re working on”.

### 2. Relentlessly pursue the details to earn vivid stories:

Here’s a secret: There is a thin line between an interrogation and an effective user interview. 

Think about the last time someone asked you what you’ve been up to. Instead of saying, “I just got back from a weekend hiking in Maine. I went to Maine because I’ve been hiking in New Hampshire a lot lately and wanted a bit of a change of scenery. I hiked Mount Katahdin because I did it a few years ago and I love that it's a pretty challenging hike with gorgeous views of the foliage at this time of year. The drive up took five and a half hours … “. Instead, you’re probably more likely to start with something like, “I just got back from a weekend hiking in Maine”.  It’s unnatural and, frankly, uncouth, to dive into a fifteen-minute diatribe about everything you did and why you did it, but that’s exactly what you’re seeking when conducting a customer interview. 

I’ve learned a bunch of sports in my life and one of the “hacks” I’ve used when learning a new sport is to get comfortable pushing slightly beyond the limits. Want to learn a handstand? Practice going a bit too far forward and rolling out of it. Want to practice hit deeper forehands in tennis? Practice hitting the ball a foot past the opposing baseline. Want to get better at bouldering? Practice falling. The same logic applies to user interviews. If you want to perfectly walk the line between interrogation and an effective user interview you may have to hit the point of interrogation a few times to get comfortable finding the line. 

In The Lean Startup by Eric Reiss, he talks about “The Five Whys”. The "five whys" boils down to the idea that if you just keep asking “why” eventually you will hit the root of the problem and uncover the vivid details that you would otherwise miss. Apply the five whys to user interviews to uncover vivid stories that encapsulate human problems that your product could solve. Looking for specific questions? Start with [this template](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/blog/user-interview-template).

### 3. Act like a therapist to uncover emotions:

Here’s a secret: When asked, most enjoy describing how things made them feel, even if it’s to strangers.

No matter the business you’re in, your solution is intertwined with emotions. Let’s take a look at how the top three new businesses on TechCrunch today are emotion-driven solutions: 

1. Creating a business that helps consumers invest in collectibles ([Rally](https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/29/rally-raises-17m-to-expand-a-platform-that-lets-you-invest-in-but-not-buy-collectibles/))? You're building an emotional connection between hobbyist Harriet and her investments that traditional stocks and bonds cannot compete with.

2. Creating a business that helps employees working from home securely access secret business data ([Axis Security](https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/29/axis-security-raises-32m-to-help-companies-stay-secure-while-working-from-home/))? You're giving confidence to Chief Information Security Officers everywhere when junior dev Jeff tries to clone your entire production database to test the functionality he’s working on. 

3. Selling $95 self-cleaning water bottles ([LARQ](https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/29/self-cleaning-water-bottle-company-larq-raises-a-10m-series-a/))? You're helping germaphobe Jerry feel empowered to travel anywhere in the world; even if he doesn’t.

It’s technically easy, but emotionally difficult to act like a therapist when doing user interviews. It frequently comes down to the fact that you need to start getting comfortable asking the sentence: “How did that make you feel?” or leading with “How does it make you feel when you’re asked to seek out new user interviews?” Then, be prepared to laugh when the user inevitably makes the joke, “I feel like this is a session with my therapist!” And finally, listen carefully when the user explains that she felt frustrated because she expected x but ended up getting y.  

## Memorable Stories Root Products In True Customer Problems

What can you tell me about the differences in Barak Obama and John McCain’s tax plan for small businesses in 2008? Probably not a ton. How about this: do you remember Joe the Plumber? If you’re in the U.S., chances are you do. 

In 2008, Barak Obama and John McCain were vying to become the next President of the United States of America. Barak Obama visited a working-class neighborhood in Toledo, Ohio and encountered a man named Joe who was upset that Obama’s small business tax proposal would increase taxes on small businesses that make more than $250,000 per year. The encounter went viral.

The encounter went viral for three reasons:

1. It’s sincere. It occurred in a working-class neighborhood, not on a debate stage. Joe had to push his way to the front of the crowd just to ask the question.

2.  It’s vivid. There’s a story here. Joe is thinking about buying a business. Not just any business, but a plumbing business and he is comparing the two tax plans only in that very small scope. 

3. It’s emotional. In the video, Joe the Plumber’s voice is raised and he’s close to confrontational. He’s painted a vivid problem and you can feel the concern he has about how the two plans will affect him. We can empathize and frame the two tax-plan solutions much more easily within the scope of Joe the Plumber’s fear and agitation rather than “American small-business owners”.

When conducting customer discovery interviews, it’s your job to uncover stories like Joe the Plumber’s. Only then can your business start to build a plan that solves the real pains. 

An image of a typewriter saying stories matter.

Storytelling

How Many Qualitative User Interviews Is Enough For Customer Discovery?

I hate “it depends” answers so let’s get right to the point: the answer is eight. 

In The Lean Startup, Eric Reiss talks about spending endless hours on releasing a new product only to find out that, “After all the hours we had spent arguing about which features to include and which bugs to fix, our value proposition was so far off that customers weren’t getting far enough into the experience to figure out how bad our design choices were”. 

Eric and his team couldn’t have solved all the product issues purely with eight customer discovery interviews, but they probably would have landed with a minimum viable product that got users far enough to at least experience the functionality so that they could provide useful feedback.

## Why Eight Is the Magic Number

One million user interviews are better than eight, but we have a product to build and without a cutoff point, we’ll delay our time to a minimum viable product; thus, delaying our time to feedback for the next iteration. We should conduct enough user interviews to get to the next level, but not so many that we never get there.

If you’ve conducted user interviews either within the customer discovery process or later in a product lifecycle you may have experienced an s-curve of confidence similar to the following:

![S curve of confidence](//images.ctfassets.net/t15p0nh3y83f/l1uq6mqAK7yYHZzXtCdjq/a898367ac90c5fecb9482b49297621d4/s_curve.png)

Here’s my typical experience:

__1. By the end of this first interview:__ I’ve learned which questions work well, which need refinement, and which should never have seen the light of day. If I started this interview with eight questions, two will be successful, two will need refinement, and four will be utter trash. I generally walk away from this interview with little customer knowledge, but a much better list of questions. 

For example, during my last round of user interviews, I started by asking, “When you think about conducting user interviews, what do you expect them to be like”. My hypothesis was that I’d be able to get some solid details in the emotions of folks about to user interview. What actually happened was a complete and utter blank stare. I stumbled to clarify what I meant and failed. In the end, I replaced the question with a better one for the remainder of the interviews.

__2. By the end of the second interview:__ I’m starting to learn a bit more about which users might be a better fit than others for these interviews. If I can, I’ll refine my segment and reduce the number of questions in favor of more well-thought-out follow-ups to the questions that work well. 

For example, when conducting user interviews for a consumer-focused product I found that after interviewing one person between 26 – 36 and someone 40+, the 40+ user had absolutely no interest in the product due to the social media platforms her and her friends use. Clearly not a staticical sample but it helped drive me in the right direction as I recruited new user interviewees.

__3. By the end of the third interview:__ I’ll have a finalized list of questions and follow-ups to provide some consistency for the following five customer discovery user interviews. I’m usually confident in the segment I’m seeking and will do the final refinement of the users I want to interview if I can.

For example, when conducting user interviews for [The User Interview Exchange](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/) I started to realize that product managers kept referring to the employees beneath them in the organization that find the users to interview; I refined my list from product managers to UX researchers. 

__4. By the end of the fourth interview:__ I’ll be buzzing with some confidence in this topic. I usually have an idea of what a response will be and the follow-up questions that I can respond with. I also am starting to get an idea for how folks are solving this problem today. 

For example, by the fourth user interview I conducted for a travel/fintech app I created, I had uncovered that the segment of “travel hackers” have sophisticated spreadsheets that work well for them and that thy enjoy the “game” of earning and using points to travel for near free. For them, the process was a hobby and community, rather than a means to an end.

__5. By the end of the fifth interview:__ I’m starting to get a really solid shape for who might use this, who might not use this, and alternatives that people use to solve the problem today. My speed has picked up by now so I’ll usually have some time to add in a forward-thinking question to start testing a hypothesis.

For example, I’ll ask, “on a scale of 1 (not likely at all) to 10 (very likely), how likely would you be to use the product if it did x? Why?” It isn't statistically significant but it forces the user to examine why they gave this a higher score if it has x than if it didn’t.

__6. By the end of the sixth user interview:__ I’m starting to feel like an expert in this small scope of questions. I’ve got a solid collection of stories and usually walk away with a couple hypotheses on how to address recurring comments, concerns, and problems that users say they have. I can better empathize with users at this point, which generally helps get more sincere responses. 

__7. By the end of the seventh interview:__ I’m starting to hear the same responses over and over. Every once in a while, I’ll get an answer that’s counter to what others have said, but most of the time I won’t. 

__8. By the end of the eighth interview:__ Responses sound pretty similar to those that I’ve already heard. By now, I have developed a solid list of key takeaways, and a list of reactions to feature/functionality. We’ve got a product to build or iterate, let’s get going!

For more information, I suggest checking out [the template I start with when I conduct a new round of user interviews](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/blog/user-interview-template).

This image is of a group of sailors all lined up.

Audience

How To Quickly Validate New Business Ideas

Hi, my name is Mike and I’m a new business idea hoarder. 

… or at least a recovering business idea hoarder. When a “brilliant” new business idea pops into my head I promptly tuck it away in my phone’s notes app where I promptly forget about it. 

Life doesn’t have to be this way. I developed a way to way filter these ideas so that I felt confident dropping most off at the dump and focusing my time and money only on the most promising idea of the batch. Below is a screenshot of my latest batch. In this post, we’ll use this list of five examples as a guide to quickly validate a business idea:

![New business ideas in iPhone notes app](//images.ctfassets.net/t15p0nh3y83f/4aZkK9dURokcP2dLcn6XMa/3b6b8dc8f1637ce9f2ba0847c67c4418/notes_app_ideas.PNG)

## Don’t be a business idea hoarder

Spring clean your new business ideas by ruthlessly answering four questions:

### 1. Does this idea spark joy?

__Estimate time to completion:__ 30 seconds per idea

Marie Kondo, the author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and host of Netflix’s “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo”, developed a method for organizing known as the KonMari method. The method involves gathering belongings and then only keeping those that spark joy. Most business ideas, if successful, will alter the course of your life so if the idea doesn’t spark joy then politely boot it into the trash. This should take about 30 seconds per idea because it’s a gut decision. 

__Here’s how I did this with my list:__

Digital prenuptial: No, I have no interest in spending my time helping the world get more prenups. I don’t think it’s a bad idea, nor do I believe that prenups are inherently bad, it just doesn’t spark joy for me.

Digital estate planning: No, I recognize that estate planning is really important and that a product like this should exist, but I’ve never had the issue myself, nor been on the other side of the table helping others do estate planning, so it’s difficult for me to strongly empathize with the pains of estate planning.

An app that tracks your impact on the earth rather than calories: Yes, I love the idea that we could help improve the world and take a mind, body, and earth approach to health. This is very exciting for me.

Undercutting the national flood insurance market: Yes, mainly because I love working with geo-data and the idea of having a distinct competitor (FEMA) is exciting to me. 

Bring your idea agency: Yes, I love assessing new businesses and being able to give 360-degree advice from market research to tech to marketing.

Two minutes and thirty seconds later, we’re down to three ideas. 

### 2. Why hasn’t someone done this yet? 

__Estimated time to completion:__ 30-minutes per idea

If you don’t know the answer, you haven’t done enough research. That said, it’s super easy to sink a ton of time into this. I average about 30-minutes per item but some take longer than others. Budget an hour and move onto the next in an hour. Answer these five questions:

1. Has someone already done this? If someone has done it already, why is it that this is an idea you’re passionate about and yet you’ve never heard about it? The best way to start with this is to see who is advertising for these keywords on Google. They’re the ones that have enough money and a complete product to bet on it with real money. Do the same with the app store if it’s a digital product. If something like it does exist, sign up for it immediately, oftentimes you find that the marketing does not meet the experience.

2. Is it possible? It is legally or technically possible to achieve this today? If it isn’t, how long will it take to get to the point where it will be? I created a startup ([getsincerity.com](https://www.getsincerity.com/)) where the end goal (autonomous finance) is not technically possible today, but the bet I made was that in five years it will be. 

3. Does this require a ton of cash? Perhaps folks haven’t tried this because it requires a massive sum of cash to startup. This could be because incumbents have flooded the market with a massive amount of marketing dollars, or it first requires giant tunnels under cities (see [The Boring Company](https://www.boringcompany.com/)). Insurance is a good example of this, it’s tough to upend Geico in auto insurance simply because they can outspend most others.

4. Is there any money in this? Perhaps this space has been avoided because there’s no money in it or not a clear channel to sell through. If it’s something that sparks joy for you and the only reason someone hasn’t done it before is due to lack of money, you’re in a really solid place.

5. Do you know something everyone else doesn’t know? This one’s pretty obvious and is on most VC’s list when identifying if they should invest in a founder.

__Here’s how I did this with my list:__

An app that tracks your impact on the earth rather than calories:

1. Has someone already done this? Yes, with varying levels of success. LyraApp failed to raise enough capital in 2016 to launch (they raised $1,350 AUD on a goal of $15,000 AUD).  [GreenChoice](https://www.greenchoicenow.com/) is a mobile app that is focused on grocery shopping. It has a GreenScore for each product which includes nutrition, processing, environment, and food safety (see screenshot below). The app EarthHero seemed promising until I downloaded and tried to use it. Frankly, I couldn’t figure out how to use it.  [YAYZY](https://www.yayzy.com/) is the best example; it integrates with banking information to automatically track your impact on the earth based on your transaction history. It’s only in Europe right now and its integration with TrueLayer, rather than Plaid, for banking info will limit YAYZY’s easy expansion to the US.

![Screenshot of the GreenChoice mobile app showing the GreenScore](//images.ctfassets.net/t15p0nh3y83f/5e3AetfP4fN73anI8Fqu9H/0408db0407eab7ab27ec13f0bfa9161a/greenchoice_screenshot.PNG)

Is it possible? Yes, the proof is in the fact that it’s being done already.

Does it require a ton of cash? No, it’s a digital product that can rely on many existing APIs and internal scoring. 

Is there money in this? Yes, a ton of models I saw in the brief research was support purchasing green products and carbon offsetting. I didn’t see a subscription but there’s an opportunity there too.

Do you know something everyone else doesn’t know? No.

Undercutting the national flood insurance market:

Has someone already done this? Yes, turns out tons of folks have done this, a simple search for “buy flood insurance” returns a ton of competitors to FEMA’s flood insurance program (see screenshot below).

![Flood insurance PPC ads on Google](//images.ctfassets.net/t15p0nh3y83f/4CgpezqUc1U3GX1Fjz28q0/5c2ad748fb86abb185d7ccb2cf7d6095/flood_insurance_screenshot.PNG)

Is it possible? Yes, the proof is in the fact that it’s being done already.

Does it require a ton of cash? Yes. Theoretically, you can find an insurer-as-a-service to underwrite everything on the backend but to get to the point where you’ve built a confident, tested, model that rezones the coasts with geo-data is a significant, and pricy undertaking.

Is there money in this? Yes; it’s insurance. Of course, major climate-change impacts is a major risk here. 

Do you know something everyone else doesn’t know? No.

Bring your idea agency

Has someone already done this? Yes, at its core it’s an agency model, many firms have taken the software or physical product angle here. My search was loaded with firms looking to help build MVPs, including but not limited to Airdev, Solvd, Purrweb, Buildmympv. I like the fixed price model which is being done by many of these. However, many of the firms I encountered either focused on coding support rather than the 360-degree views from product > marketing > customer research > development. 

Is it possible? Yes. 

Does it require a ton of cash? No, it’s an agency model.

Is there money in this? Yes; but I’m guessing it will be remarkably difficult to build a flywheel for a small-business/startup agency like this.

Do you know something everyone else doesn’t know? Yes, being a former market researcher, an expert in Fintech, a digital marketer, and a full-stack developer puts me in a solid place for a Fintech-focused go at this.

Based on my analysis above, one hour and thirty minutes later, we’re down to one idea: An app that tracks your impact on the earth rather than calories. 

### 3. How much does this cost to do?

__Estimated time to completion:__ 1 hour per idea

Pursuing a business idea has tons of tradeoffs. Assess three costs to further filter your idea:

1. Time cost. Time, when translated to opportunity cost, is the most important cost. With unlimited time, money is no object, but with unlimited money, time is still an object. Of course, no one has unlimited time and time has opportunity costs. A silly example is that Elon Musk, with unlimited time, can dig a giant tunnel for The Boring Company with a shovel. However, with millions of dollars it’s still going to take years to build. 

I took an entire year to become a confident full-stack developer for little more than $75 in Udemy courses. My time cost here wasn’t $75 though. The real-time cost was forgoing my salary as a market researcher for a year. I could have taken my “profits” and tried to hire someone to build the product for me.

2. Emotional cost. If you spend your time on this idea what will happen to your emotions? On one hand, waking up inspired is what I’d call “emotional profit”. On the other hand, if it means spending less time with family and friends, giving up the decompressing Netflix time, or the confidence you get seeing your bank account go upward, you may risk running an emotional “deficit”.

I moved back into my parents’ home at 28 years old. On one hand, it’s easy when you’re single to do this, but it decimates prospects for a new relationship. Fortunately, I’d built up a bank of friendships to help me counter the inevitable loneliness that comes with starting a startup.

3. Currency cost. How much is this idea going to cost to get off the ground? Can you build this on your own or do you need to hire talent? Do you need inventory or physical goods and space? Of course, you’ll probably underestimate about three-fold, but it’s worth doing nonetheless.

I could have hired two full-time developers from overseas to build my product, but having never managed a team like this, I’d probably end up spending at least $40,000 to build out my product and I didn’t have $80,000 laying around.

__Here’s how I did this with my list:__

An app that tracks your impact on the earth rather than calories.

1. Time cost. My basic estimate says that this would require about 595 hours of work to get an MVP out; in other words, about 10 weeks at 60 hours per week. The time cost I need to compare here is, do I think that 10 weeks spent on this project trumps the 10 weeks I can spend on other products?

2. Emotional cost. I’m already living on a minimal lifestyle so I can’t cut back farther. If I pursue this idea, the emotional cost will be restarting from the bottom of a mountain. There’s an exciting temptation to get up the mountain, but there’s also the knowledge that I’d be sacrificing time on a product that I can watch the numbers go up on for a new product that will beat me down for another ten weeks. On the other hand, there’s a much more quantifiable path to improving the world with an app that tracks your impact on the earth rather than calories than [The User Interview Exchange](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/).

3. Currency cost. Basic estimates stick me at a cost of around $2,050 for these ten weeks to get this up and running. Considering I’m a confident full-stack developer, but would be the only one working on this, I know from experience that having code reviews will be essential. A lot of this estimated cost will be code reviews from a service called [PullRequest](https://www.pullrequest.com/) that I’ve has success with in the past. I have the cash but need to determine if $2,050 is better spent here or on The User Interview Exchange.

Here's a screenshot of my quick estimates in Excel:

![Excel screenshot of estimates for MVP](//images.ctfassets.net/t15p0nh3y83f/6CqMglDD1VM847Yr4hbbpo/f94911ce25df5e1dec5c2e07d3ffc39f/excel_screenshot_of_mvp_estimates.png)

In the end, I added this idea to the trash. The reason was ultimately the emotional cost. I spent ten months building Sincerity only to delay the launch due to COVID. Ten months for not a single customer feels like shit. On the other hand, I started The User Interview Exchange, and seeing product market fit feels like the emotional win I need at the moment. Going back to square seems insurmountable right now.

### 4. Who else cares about this?

__Estimated time to completion:__ 8 hours per idea

Before you start building you need to find out if anyone else cares and if they do, who they are,  why they care, and where they reside. Conduct [eight quality user interviews](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/blog/how-many-qualitative-user-interviews-is-enough) to determine if others care about your idea. If they do; who is the customer persona? I’ve written extensively about [how to recruit participants for user research](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/blog/how-to-recruit-participants-for-b2b-user-interviews) and [how to conduct user research](https://www.userinterviewexchange.com/blog/how-to-conduct-qualitative-user-interviews).

If conducting the user research feels like an arduous task, I suggest you revisit step 1.

![New business idea vetting framework](//images.ctfassets.net/t15p0nh3y83f/3k3EynNct8kZDyL66st5x0/b20657a9a58638a3b4841447112de7fb/new_business_idea_framework.png)

Don’t be an idea hoarder. Move new ideas in and out with ruthless efficiency. The worst-case scenario is that you get better at testing and learning.


These are stamping instruments, used to validate or invalidate items on paper.

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