HOW TO:

Do

Seed

Research

Based on a SeedStart lecture by Amol Sarva, CEO of Peek

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to

have a

hypothesis

• just asking questions in your research will help to sharpen your ideas

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to test your

hypothesis

• when you ask people what they think of your idea, most of them will probably give you an exaggerated, positive response because who wants to tell you your product sucks?

• so it’s your responsibility to figure out which questions will generate authentic answers check out how Vin Vacanti’s (Yipit) does it [go to the first under “Get Honest Feedback”]

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to create credibility

• when you present an idea to investors, don’t assume they have a secret stash of PPTs with your market statistics already pie-charted• some investors are DATA-LESS CREATURES and don’t have time to do the research you’re supposed to do anyway• providing data for investors says “we’ve done the work for you” • plus, you need to have a credible hypothesis you can thoroughly justify

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to check if you are

RIGHT

• you will have found the right product market fit when a good percentage of your users say they would be “extremely disappointed” if they lost your product

• so get out there and ask potential users how they would really feel if you closed shop tomorrow

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to know your

MISTAKES

• even if you end up completely changing your product (e.g., sticky bits turned turntable.fm), the research you did will still be valuable

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surveys

& focus

groups

• quantify your responses as much as possible e.g., rate preferences based on a scale of 1-10 instead of asking open-ended questions like “what do you think?”

• then prioritize the answers with the most extreme numbers (closest to 1 or 10) when developing a product, this will help you figure out what people really want and what they really could care less about

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surveys

& focus

groups

• most people who participate in anonymous survey groups either have low attention levels or are just in it for the compensation set up easy questions (e.g., multiple choice) and make sure you use language that is familiar to the people you are asking

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desk research

• top down approach: look at the macro-economics of your market and multiply e.g., people eat X meals per day; there are Y people in the city; we want to capture Z% of that • bottom up approach: take revenue numbers from real companies e.g., cost of McDonald’s average transaction # of customers in the market # of potential annual transactions

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desk research

• unit economics approach: think about your business in its unit levels (the financial flow) e.g., how many you are going to sell what people would pay for it

• most investors like to think about businesses in their unit levels• they also want to see all three forms of desk research in your analysis of the market

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anthropological methods (reach out and touch somebody)• watch how long/often someone surfs websites that are relevant to your product • take photos or videos e.g. dump out a person’s purse to see if your product belongs there (what’s in your bag? tag on Flickr)

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• use online survey panels, then take the results and create your own charts GreenFieldOnline (recently acquired by Toluna) reward system for people who answer surveys

• email surveys to your friends (expect mainly answers to “is this dumb” type questions) Google Docs and SurveyMonkey are good tools for setting up surveys and collecting answers

• when you’re hiring, use job interviews to find candidates who have worked at your competitor companies• call competitors as a potential client and ask intelligent questions

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• making ads is cheaper than products (see what people click on to gauge their interests)

Cars.com started by just creating a website; if a customer bought a car through them, the founders would literally go to a car lot and buy the car and drive it to the customer’s door; they just wanted to see if there was interest around the idea

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• make vaporware (things that simulate user behavior), even if it’s just images Peek’s first prototype was a block of wood; the founders carried the block around and pretended to use it as if it were the device they were trying to build, because they wanted to see their own user behavior around it

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• use screenshots of other people’s products • modify to make it your own to show how your product works• add “could do” elements that interest those you’re pitching

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and finally . . . articles like this

one will NOT help you do research

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