

The One Step Every Entrepreneur Should Take Before Launching a Business - bslatkin
http://www.minisprout.com/web-apps/the-one-step-every-entrepreneur-should-take-before-launching-a-business/

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asuth
FWIW, if I had done this before I launched Quizlet, Quizlet wouldn't exist. In
fact, if I had even done a google search for the functionality of Quizlet, it
wouldn't exist. Now it's 5x bigger than any of its competitors and a top 400
US website.

Just sayin.. :)

~~~
sparknlaunch12
Please explain. Why?

Curious :)

~~~
asuth
Quizlet was originally for myself and then for my friends in school. It wasn't
even a real business for over a year. I never did any market research or
surveys. I just built features I wanted and features my friends wanted, and it
turned out to be a thing that a whole lot of other people happened to want.
Quizlet has grown 100% through word-of-mouth since it started.

Not saying those things aren't useful, but _nothing_ beats being your own
customer. Since I'm not a student anymore and still work on Quizlet full-time,
it's super important for me and the whole team to have exposure to our users'
experience and mindset. So to hack it, we started a Spanish class at the
office so we'd have to use the product. We've also been going on field-trips
to various middle- and high-school classrooms around the bay area about once a
week.

~~~
6ren
If you don't mind me asking, what's your competitive strategy? It's possible
to create something valuable for yourself, and then it turns out other people
value it too; but that can attract competitors. Though serendipity can often
creates value, it serendipty rarely seems to protect it - it's common that the
person who sows doesn't reap. Competitive advantage seems to need a deliberate
strategy (though I'm more comfortable creating than defending). Do you find
this too?

~~~
asuth
I don't see our competitive position as different than any other typical
company. We've got a great product that people love, and we build new things
into it that our competitors can't predict or move fast enough to build. We've
built a brand that students and teachers know and like.

One deliberate competitive advantage is that we're a free, ad-supported site.
Most education products go for a subscription model, and that requires
enterprise sales (selling to districts, blech) and fundamentally limits the
number of people who will use and enjoy your product.

The ad model only works when you have scale (which we do). If we had been in a
position where we needed to make money quickly, we wouldn't have grown into
the size and scope we have now.

~~~
calydon
I think this is great, but I'm still unclear about why market researching your
idea would have caused you to not pursue it further. If you had asked users
when you first started, or even now, "would you use an awesome
flashcard/memorization service that is FREE" I would expect the results that
came back would encourage the idea of going forward with the business, because
I know flashcards are a popular tool for studying and lots of people study.

Are you saying that the number of existing quiz/flashcard sites would create a
research result that would discourage attempting another one? It seems like
you knew while you were building Quizlet that you had something different in
mind, so the only unknown was whether people would use it en masse. As it
turns out, you were right, but, and this is a sincere question, was this
vision or luck?

Isn't it more accurate to say that the art lies in knowing what questions to
ask the oracle, and how to ask those questions, rather than ignoring the value
of prophecy?

~~~
asuth
Ya, I'm saying if I had done any googling, I might have found
flashcardexchange.com or other competitors that existed when I started it, and
settled for one of them. I'd say it was luck that I didn't do any research,
and when I decided to build my own thing, I had a clear vision of what I
wanted.

All this was when I was 15, and I wasn't thinking about things in terms of
startups and competition and so on. It's certainly possible that another way
it would have happened was researching the competitive landscape and deciding
I could do it better.

------
duopixel
I'm wary of online survey results as users just want to get through them as
soon as posible. Their motivation is not helping you, it's reaching the carrot
at the end of the stick.

I once had a prospective client who wanted to launch a health tourism website,
he created a survey and came back to me excited about the results: people
wanted to do travel tourism with four companions on average, one user even
said he wanted to travel with 8 companions! Of course I was skeptical so I
looked into the data.

Turns out it was all bot filled data, the survey company would give a monetary
incentive to people who filled the survey, which is an open invitation to game
the system.

Bad data is worse than no data at all, because it gives you false confidence
in things that might be outright wrong.

I know Google is not naive and they probably filter out questionable data, but
I have lost track of all the times I've responded that I live in Afghanistan
(first item of the country dropdown) just to get through a sign up form
designed by the marketing department.

------
blklilligs
I'm so surprised that this didn't get more coverage when it launched. This is
one of the more innovative things to come out of Google in the last few years.
I saw an example survey and the reporting interface is pretty rad.

<https://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/examples>

------
john_flintstone
This doesn't impress me. You get far better and more accurate results from
running a Google ad campaign on a mocked up landing page than a survey would
deliver.

An ad campaign gives you far more: number of impressions, click through rate,
cost per click, key words and phrases potential customers actually use, etc.
When it comes to surveys, people lie all the time (Would you hire someone from
ethnic minority X? Answer: Of course, some of my best friends are...). People
lie all the time, their Google search activity doesn't lie.

~~~
tomgallard
This is exactly what I do. Knock up a landing page, and stick up an Adwords
campaign.

Its a great way to find and engage some initial customers, who will be able to
help you shape your product as it develops. Also gives you a great idea on how
much it will cost you to acquire customers, and gets you a web presence nice
and early.

Oh- and I always talk to my other half about it- she's a complete non-techy so
always has a different angle on things, which can be really useful.

I've written out the details steps I use here:
[http://blog.crispyfriedsoftware.com/post/19774815792/6-steps...](http://blog.crispyfriedsoftware.com/post/19774815792/6-steps-
for-your-startup-before-you-start-coding)

~~~
sparknlaunch12
Landing pages may capture email addresses and gauge some level of interest.
However they don't properly validate your offering.

Ash Maurya (lean cannas) writes about landing pages but also the importance of
doing your market research.

Http://www.ashmaurya.com/

~~~
tomgallard
Yes, I agree-its a good first step, but it isn't sufficient on its own. Also
not applicable to some products/services.

------
pazimzadeh
I think that the title should be:

"The One Step Every Entrepreneur Should Take Before Launching a Business:
Survey your customers"

~~~
SkyMarshal
YES, thank you! I was just going to rant about tabloid titles like this on HN

FFS people, stop it. Just title your submission _exactly_ what it is about,
stop using the language of supermarket checkout line tabloids to try to pique
people's interest. If that's the actual article title, don't copy and paste
it, but make a better one.

An even more concise example for this one:

"Google Consumer Surveys: survey your target market before launching"

In other news, ironic how the article's header picture is a supermarket.

~~~
chmike
Agree. The question I ask myself is what truth do we get from such survey ? It
depends on the people who are responding to the survey. This is just probing.
What about product user feedback and product optimization based on the
feedback ?

As Ford said, if he asked people what they wanted, the answer would have been
faster horses. So the question asked is of course important, and as much as
the surveyed people. This may work only for particular ideas. And finaly only
the execution will make the difference.

~~~
zacharycohn
People often miss the point of that quote. If he had asked people what they
wanted, they'd have said "faster horses."

What they REALLY were saying was "I want to get places faster."

------
jcc80
This is good - .10 for non-demographic targeted and .50 to target a
demographic. But, the fact that the question types are all multiple choice /
ratings and don't allow respondents to give short answers like Pickfu is a
downer. The insights from people saying why they chose an answer is the most
valuable info.

------
sparknlaunch12
Great product. Getting surveys filled out is an impossible task. After three
months only 2 people completed our survey. You can offer incentives but you
risk creating bias.

~~~
bslatkin
You're referring to this survey?

[http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/project-
mackere...](http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/project-mackerel-
please-sir-complete-our-quick-survey/)

~~~
sparknlaunch12
Yes, that's the one. We have tried various unpaid methods of promoting the
survey link. It feels as online users are simply not interested.

This is understandable given the only survey we would be likely to complete is
one with an iPad on offer.

We are now planning to call people and ask then a series of questions. The
conversion rate may bee slightly higher.

------
jeza
If I had any concern, it's that the surveys are used as a means to access
premium content. This may or may not effect the quality of answers.

------
meisterbrendan
This is poor advice. Asking people if they would do something may not give you
good data: people are finicky, and may not do what they say they will.
Alternate solution: put up a kickstarter. Instead of asking people if they
_would_ do something, get them to put the money where there mouth is.
Kickstarter is real market validation, not just a throw-away survey.

------
ecaroth
Didn't know this resource existed - Great article!

------
gbog
Off-topic: Is it my tired eyes, my broken browser (Chrome on Ubuntu Linux) or
a special javastrick: The screenshots appear "suddenly" when scrolling down
the page, a bit like a lazy load of images or something similar. NB if you
scrolled down to the bottom already, you have to reload the page to see it,
and it seems less noticeable than at first load.

~~~
Wilya
The page loads [0], which, given its name, probably means they do some lazy
loading. I've seen it too.

[0] [http://www.minisprout.com/wp-content/plugins/jquery-image-
la...](http://www.minisprout.com/wp-content/plugins/jquery-image-lazy-
loading/javascripts/jquery.lazyload.mini.js?ver=1.5.0)

------
handzhiev
Every survey that asks "Would you pay for..." is flawed. I would pay for many
things but I am not paying for them. The best way to really get some data is
to set up a sales page, put your price there and count the clicks on the Buy
Now button. Use Adwords or whatever to drive the traffic. This works much
better than surveys.

------
gavanwoolery
Actually, not to be cynical, but the first step is to realize that your first
ten ideas are probably going to be crap, and save yourself the time of even
trying market research on them.

~~~
Negitivefrags
If you have ten ideas and do nothing, why would the next ten ideas be any
better?

Unfortunately you don't get better at having ideas by simply having more
ideas. You get better ideas because you have experience in trying to use them.

------
derrida
"Every Entrepreneur". Yeah right. What about when your making something people
don't even know they want yet.

~~~
jasonlotito
Well, they may not know what they want, but what you'll be selling solves a
problem. You can still validate based on that.

------
ricksta
how do they keep people from filling in bogus answers just to get through the
survey?

~~~
jackhebert
(I work on the project)

Some algorithms to detect users consistently giving bad answers, but in
general it is easy enough for users to give correct answers. Check out the
response time histograms on the example surveys.

We also have a whitepaper here comparing our results to other survey providers
and known results:
[http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/static/consum...](http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/static/consumer_surveys_whitepaper.pdf)

------
6ren
> It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people
> don't know what they want until you show it to them. - Steve Jobs

But it depends on how new your product is; e.g. Macdonald's can calculate
demand for new store locations.

------
melayan
Has anyone had great success with Amazon's mTurk?

------
iamgopal
I didn't know this, thanks for the link. But why google is doing this ? Is
survey business that big ?

------
voodoochilo
oh this one is funny! did i get that right? i will have to pay google this
moneystuff to create even more market research data for them? (because as the
survey is done on their site the data will end up on their servers)

well, call me a greedy bastard, but in my opinion they would have to pay me,
would't they?

