Interviewed over 100 potential customers!
by Glenn EspinosaIn June I woke up with a realization that I was building something that potentially no one really wanted.
I scrapped what I had built and went back to the drawing board. I concluded that I needed to talk to more potential customers to better understand the problem of unproductive meetings.
I set a goal to talk to 100 people over the course of the next 2 months. Today, 1 day late from my end goal of August 5th, I've up to 109 interviews!
I did this by:
- Emailing custom emails to over 175 people in my immediate network
- Asking for introductions to other people after every interview
- Providing an easy template that people could use to intro me to people they knew via email
- Chatting up strangers at meetups/bars/conferences (these were often the best and most enlightening conversations!)
- Announcing my goal on twitter
- Liking/replying to a bunch of people who talked about the problem I was trying to solve
So, after talking to all these people, I noticed a few trends and patterns. One stuck out: asynchronous communication for remote teams is broken.
And so, after two 24+ hour coding sessions, Sidebar was born!
Going out to beta users later this week.
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Hi Glenn, way to go! You've done a great job of being a Product Manager and focusing on the problem the user has instead of throwing a solution at them and hoping it works.
Now that you have a problem and solution, I think it makes sense to think about the language (Product Marketing) that you use to describe the outcome.
On your site, you state what it is and how you do it, but the marketing headline would be more effective if you were stating the Outcome that people desire. This is just a guess but I think that what you discovered is a problem around retention in slack. People are frustrated when using slack for asynchronous communication because users often dont come back in a timely manner and it is too slow. Your solution is to timebox the chat room.
If I'm getting this correct so far, perhaps language such as "Break free from slack conversations that are too time consuming" and "The easiest way to get more done with your asynchronous team via slack" would help visitors better relate to your idea!
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Super inspiring. Nice work and dedication Glenn!
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Awesome work Glenn. Inspiring!
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Thanks - its just the beginning. Still a long way to go!
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Looks good, love the backstory and soliciting potential customers, something I'm lacking.
What happens after the channel is archived, is it still available for review, are there proposed outcomes?
Nice idea.
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The channel is still searchable and available to be revived. It's just no longer listed on the Slack channels sidebar.
What do you mean by proposed outcomes?
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Is sidebar a substitute for face to face meetings because you've got a remote team (or just don't want to do face to face).
If so, every meeting should have an outcome, and someone responsible for that outcome.
The "get done" of "watch as things get done".
I may have misunderstood the purpose of sidebar :)
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Glenn, awesome approach. Could you please share more about how you reached out strangers, and selected them as your “potential customers”? Also what were your findings on product exactly, what did you changed after those interviews?
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I talked to anyone who might be working in a tech team. That included developers, product managers, scrum masters, managers, etc.
The bulk of my interviews were with project managers/product managers.
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Interesting Idea I must say.
Have you tried opening your site on retina display ? The images on the landing page are not clear.
Also, how are you going to get your initial beta users ?-
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A good amount of people I interviewed have agreed to beta test whatever I comeback up with.
A few have provided insight on mockups I’ve emailed them.
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Hi,
your experience sounds pretty impressive, congrats!
What I still don't get is what is "asynchronous communication for remote teams is broken". I think you are talking about a problem but I don't understand what is that, even taking into account that I have pretty extensive experience as a team member. Checking your website didn't add clarity. :((