Want your startup to thrive? Listen to your customers

Guerrilla usability testing

The number one reason why startups fail, according to CB Insights, is that they never find a market need for their product. The sixth most common reason why startups fail is that they create a user-unfriendly product followed closely by not listening to customers. Think about that for a second. Three of the top mistakes that startup founders make can be solved simply by talking to your customers.

I personally learned this lesson that hard way on not one occasion but multiple times. What’s more embarrassing is that most of my professional career was spent leading user-centered design and user research teams, so I know that engaging your customers in a dialog can seem overwhelming. I understand that startup founders often rush to build their product because they are excited about their idea, or they think that testing their concept or product design are distractions requiring too much work. Not only that, doing customer research can be intimidating given that there are many techniques, which are complex in their details. This article will hopefully help you get started.

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Have a startup idea? Here are the first things you should do

People say that ideas are a dime a dozen, but many entrepreneurs—even experienced ones—struggle to come up with promising product ideas. The fact that you have an idea that excites you is a great milestone, and even though the startup journey is long and arduous, you at least have got a ticket to the show now. However, starting to build your product at the outset can be extremely risky (unless you are working on a breakthrough platform technology such as blockchain or quantum computing).

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Do you need a co-founder to build a successful startup?

A TechCrunch article published in 2016 argued that startups that have more than one founder aren’t necessarily more successful. The author pointed out that at the time of writing, 52.3% of startups that exited (were acquired or IPO’d) had only one founder. This analysis flew in the face of conventional wisdom: that teams needed two or three co-founders to make it. While I don’t dispute the findings, I do think that summary statistics miss a number of nuances that are critical when deciding whether or not to bring on a co-founder. In this article, we’ll dive deeper into the dynamics that are likely to drive this decision.

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Want your startup to succeed? Know thy competition

Know thy competition

Too often startups tell me that they have no competition. I write those startups off right away because I can guarantee that not only do they have competition, but the competition is a worthy opponent that must be taken seriously.

Rather than convincing me that your startup is special, stating that you have no competition tells me instead that you are either ill-informed, unrealistic, delusional, or too lazy to perform a thorough analysis of your competitive landscape. I’m sure the motivation is often just trying to impress the investor, but I am infinitely more impressed when a startup rattles of a dozen competitors and tells me everything there is to know about them. The startup journey is a competition, and it inspires substantial confidence when a team has thoroughly studied their adversaries.

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