Applying Lean Startup Methods to Customer Conversations by Asking Ourselves 13 Basic Questions

The last book I read, Talking to Humans, helped to make the act of customer conversations more clear. We've done a ton but didn't know how to get the most out of them. What information should we be looking for? How can we get the right answers we need to learn?

The book provides 13 questions to help (prospective) businesses solidify their basic assumptions. This process, in turn, gives you hypotheses you can test against in your conversations.

This process of identifying assumptions, testing, and iterating is applying the lean startup methodology before you even get to developing your product. Doing this will save you 100x time down the line. You'll actually know if you have a good solution to a significant problem - more importantly, one that people would actually pay for.

We've found that taking the time to answer these seemingly basic questions has changed who we're targeting and how we're approaching them. It's awesome. As a result, we'll have conversations with more qualified customers. We'll actually be addressing their biggest problems. We'll be making sales more quickly.

If you're looking to startup a business or work on a side-hustle, we fully recommend you answer these questions to give you a head start:

• My target customer will be?
• The problem my customer wants to solve is?
• My customer's need can be solved with?
• Why can't my customer solve this today?
• The measurable outcome my customer wants to achieve is?
• My primary customer acquisition tactic will be?
• My earliest adopter will be?
• I will make money (revenue) by?
• My primary competition will be?
• I will beat my competitors primarily because of?
• My biggest risk to financial viability is?
• My biggest technical or engineering risk is?
• What assumptions do we have that, if proven wrong, would cause this business to fail?