Only the market can tell if your idea is good. Everything else is just opinion.
You must be aware of that customer’s behaviour and customer’s opinion are different.
You should observe their past actions to verify your venture idea rather than asking their future actions.
The best way to get unbiased opinions of your venture idea is not to tell your venture idea. Rather, you should ask whether they have faced problems that you want to solve and what actions they have done to solve the problem.
The bad questions are
•
I have this venture idea, do you think this is good idea?
•
I have this service, do you want to use it?
•
I have this product, how much do you want to spend for this product?
The good questions are
•
Why did you use that service or product?
•
Please explain your experience in detail when you used the service last time.
•
What other services or products have you tried to solve that problem?
You must know what products or services that the current users are using to determine whether your idea is better or not.
In other words, you should know what your service is replacing. However, it does not necessary mean that substitute is in the same category. For example, people could listen audio books or listen musics in the bus.
It is vital to have an intuition that how much your service is better as an entrepreneur.
Imaging when your venture fails. Why did you fail? How you gonna solve it? What facts should be based on your imagination?
Doing it (customer interview) wrong is worse than doing nothing at all.
What segments of customers you should rely on?
Set who are your main customers. Define them in detail.
Your main customers are the ones who suffer from the problem
You should gather customers by
•
creating a landing page
•
managing community
•
blogging
•
networking
Tips for interviewing
•
prepare gifts
•
interview through phone call
•
examine with lean canvas before interview
