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Talking to Humans: Customer Discovery 101 Frank Rimalovski Executive Director, NYU Entrepreneurial Institute Managing Director, NYU Innovation Venture Fund Adjunct Professor, NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering Instructor, National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps May 13, 2015

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In the beginning…

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Evolution…

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Buzzword (Non)Compliance

u  MVP ≠ Product

u  Pivot ≠ Restart

u  Customer Discovery ≠ Selling

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Customer Discovery

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Hypothesis

Design Experiments

Test

Insight

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Goals of Customer Discovery 1.  (In)validate problem/solution fit

2.  (In)validate business model component hypotheses

3.  Begin to identify & test Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

u  NOT to get statistical relevance, but pattern recognition to get insight

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TALKING TO HUMANS

Success starts with understanding your customers

GIFF CONSTABLEwith Frank Rimalovskiillustrations by Tom Fishburneand foreword by Steve Blank

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Who do you want to learn from?

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3A. Who Do You Want To Learn From (Inked)

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What do you want to learn?

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4D. What Do You Want To Learn

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What do you want to learn?

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What do you want to learn? u Do not sell! No demos! No presentations!

u Get stories, not speculation

u Ask open-ended questions

u Ask why? Then why? They why again!

u Create a guide (not a script)

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How do you find interview subjects?

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5A. How Do You Find Your Interview Subjects (Inked)

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How do you find interview subjects?

u  At least one degree of separation

u  Make referrals happen

u  Get creative…recruiting hacks

u  Fish where the fish are…

u  …In the wild

u  Promise to be brief

u  Play the student/researcher card

u  Thoughts on enterprise customers

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How to ensure an effective interview?

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6B. How To Ensure An Effective Session (Draft)

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How to ensure an effective interview?

u  Beware of confirmation bias u  Do it in person, one at a time u  Get subjects to tell a story u  Look for solution hacks u  Understand their priority u  Follow your nose & drill down u  Listen and STFU! u  Have someone take notes

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Pro Tips: Students/teams

u  Practice, practice, practice

u  Don’t start with your dream customer

u  Flatter subjects

u  Be transparent

u  Follow up/stay in touch

u  Write up key insights right away

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Pro Tips: Instructors/educators

u  Do exercises & practice before hand

u  Hold teams accountable to >100 interviews

u  Get the class/cohort to help one another

u  Make them publish interview summaries

u  Read & critique their summaries

u  Keep them focused on the problem, not the solution

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Resources

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TALKING TO HUMANS

Success starts with understanding your customers

GIFF CONSTABLE

Pre-release edition

with Frank Rimalovskiand illustrations by Tom Fishburne

bit.ly/llpcdvs talkingtohumans.com

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Questions?

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2B. Story

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Thank you!

fbr4@nyu.edu @rimalovski nyu.edu/entrepreneur nyuentrepreneur.com 16 Washington Place, NYC

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