

Lecture 16: How to Run a User Interview - adenot
http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec16/

======
rajens
The #1 piece of advice that I took away from this was: "“Who you talk to is
just as important as what questions you ask and what you pull away from it."

Nowadays with things like Lean Startup Machine and Startup Weekend (which I do
think serve a purpose and are valuable to building habits around customer
development), I've seen prospective entrepreneurs get caught up in the MOTIONS
of doing customer development and interviews thinking i.e. just getting out of
the room and talking to anyone they can find on the street, instead of the
real target customer that you've really thought about. I like Emmett's focus
on really thinking this part through.

I've published the 31 top quotes that I picked up from the lecture here:
[https://medium.com/how-to-start-a-startup/31-quotes-from-
emm...](https://medium.com/how-to-start-a-startup/31-quotes-from-emmett-shear-
on-how-to-run-a-user-interview-dacf0f09f5d7)

------
Dogamondo
Awesome what you're doing here with the video and the transcript. But can we
make the transcript not include the pauses? It really throws me off the flow
of the takeways when you put all the 'Ums' and 'Ahh's there in the transcript.
It doesn't add at all to the message when reading it...

"Um, so, uh - so that was Twitch. And I'm going - I want to give you guys a
little bit of a, uh - uh, a little bit of an insight into, uh, with Twitch
what that, what that meant going to go talk to users."

I know keeping it real is great and all but for the people who are reading and
not watching, it would be awesome if some editing could be used to make the
read more succinct.

"So that was Twitch. And I want to give you guys a little bit of an insight
into what that meant (when) going to go talk to users."

Minor irk of course, really appreciate what you've done otherwise, thanks.

~~~
lizfoss
yep it's being edited! should be a lot better now

------
raldi
One of the points in the lecture was that you have to be ready to abandon a
feature, even if you really believe in it, if user feedback indicates a lack
of interest.

But what if it's one of those things (like TiVo and Uber) that people think,
in advance, that they don't need -- but it turns out they'll be totally hooked
once they try it?

~~~
physPop
Aren't we also encouraged to embrace "disruptive" ideas that change the status
quo? No focus groups, full of average people who are content with the default
is going to give that much meaningful feedback for game changing features
IMO...

~~~
mattyfo
"These average people who are content with the default" are going to be your
customers. My grandpa has an iPhone and his friend uses uber all the time.
Both are very conservative and might fall into that realm of 'average people'
yet use disruptive game changing ideas.

Get out there and empathize with real people with real problems. You'll find
that even the most boring, ho-hum, run of the mill person will be happy to lay
down hard cash for your game changing idea if it fixes THEIR problem.

That being said, focus groups are a horrible way to get meaningful feedback.
Customer interviews and other more in depth ethnographic techniques are going
to deliver what you're looking for.

------
waveney
Great lecture!

Coincidentally, my team is building a product that connects startup founders
to user interviewees, specified by demographic. Looking for a few founders to
test the platform for free before we launch. Let us know if any of you are
interested! team@munocreative.com

~~~
heymishy
that sounds like an interesting concept, similair to part of what something I
am working would like to acheive. Are you providing a structure or allowing
'interviews' to be whatever form/structure the interviewer wants? good luck,
its a problem i havent seen solved properly yet!

~~~
waveney
We're providing a structure: Founders enter open-ended questions and reference
links. Interviewees answer questions while referring to the company website in
an iframe above.

So you can assign tasks then ask usability questions, or gear the interview
more generally toward your business concept, how well users understand your
site's value prop, etc. Love to hear more about wht you're working on!

------
gregwebs
Thank you! I got the most out of this lecture because the presenter went into
detail on just one thing.

I feel that almost all of the startup advice is usually more of an idea with a
lot of missing details on how to apply it. And this talk showed how important
the details are and how if you just take the typical high-level advice of
"talk to users" there are a lot of things you can screw up.

------
untilHellbanned
May I ask who were Twitch's competitors and how did they differentiate
themselves when recruiting users from those competitor sites?

------
cpursley
This is timely, I have one today.

