How To Kill Your Startup — Obvious Pixel

We can think of early companies as systems. If the system is growing organically then it’s healthy, if not, well, we have work to do. As a new product is being built, the answer to growth is to build something people not only want, but rave about.

A lot goes into getting this right, but I’d argue that there are two rate-limiting factors [1] to be prioritized. Without them, you’ll never achieve escape velocity from the doldrums of luke warm customer reviews.

The first variable to increase is customer exposure. Spend a lot of time with customers. [2] You may be thinking, “I’m not a researcher, how would I do that? Should I hire someone? Can’t we just outsource this?”. The answer to these issues is straightforward - do your own research. Let me explain.

“It’s from the direct exposure to the users that we see the improvements in the design.” - Jared Spool

The closer the people building the product are to the person using the product, the better off you’ll be. These conversations will hone your intuition in a way that pdf reports or disembodied statistics never could. Imagine reading these data: ‘22% of users use a todo list program” or “45% of users have considered leasing a car”.

These raise more questions than they answer. How do I get to the deeper insight? Compounding the problem, these stats aren’t memorable - meaning they are less likely to impact what we do every day. So much of the good stuff is lost in translation. It is by experiencing your customer’s world firsthand that you increase the odds you build something that matters.

So yes, you’ll have to talk to customers. The good news is that you’re a human and you talk to people all the time. Don’t believe the warnings from professionals about how sophisticated interviewing is - it’s a skill, not magic, and skills can be learned. Are there some pitfalls to avoid? Of course. Are some people better than others? Yep, check. Neither means you can’t quickly learn the basics and get good enough through practice. [3]

“Don’t start a startup where you need to go through someone else to get users.” - Paul Graham

The second factor that can drag on growth is your pace of iteration. The feedback you hear from early users must impact the product. Knowing everything that needs to be fixed and doing nothing about it, won’t help your users or your company.

“To learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.” - Stephen R. Covey.

Your early fans have to see forward momentum, ideally their ideas coming to life, even if slowly or in a different way than they imagined. Progress will keep early adopters, and your team, engaged and excited.

So what’s the anti-pattern to success? How can you ensure failure? Long releases built without understanding your customer. Address these two factors and your chance of success just went up, way up.

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Footnotes:

Rate limiting factors are conditions preventing the overall process from running at a faster rate. For more, see Wikipedia.
If you are your user you have a big advantage. You can build and test rapidly by just using the thing you’re making yourself. However, the vast majority of teams are not their user - thus the emphasis on talking to customers.
To learn research from the pros, check out Steve Portigal (@steveportigal), Erika Hall (@mulegirl), Leah Buley (@leahbuley), Jared Spool (@jmspool), or Steve Krug (@skrug).