The Problem Interview

Case Study of Product, Market, and Customer Validation

As you start out on a new venture, whether it be a product or service you seek to sell, it is crucial to understand your customer's point of view before coming up with a solution. Many entrepreneurs fail because they start out with a solution prior to defining a problem. This ultimately leads to a product which no one wants to use.

One of the ventures I have co-founded is to disrupt the higher education space. Here are some thinks we considered during the problem interview:

Product Risk: What is the problem/frustration? What are the top 3 problems?

Market Risk: Who is the compettion? How do customers solve the problem today?

Customer Risk: Who owns the pain/frustration?

My co-founder and I identified a group of 10 customers from three segments and conducted a face to face group interview/discussion. Here is the script we followed...

Welcome:
Thanks customers for participation. Begin telling them the about your product and the problem as you understand it, and see if it resonates with them.

Customer Segments:
How old are you?
Do you take courses online?
etc...

Tell Your Story:
Tell a story which includes use case about the problem/frustration you are going to solve. Does this resonate with you?

Problem Ranking:
Prioritize problems from customers point of view. This will help focus your efforts during product development by working on the most desired features first.

Explore Customers Views:
No script is needed for this. A heart to heart talk about how big of a problem is this and what the customers are currently doing about it. Understand the workflow from cradle to grave. Clearly identify 'must-have', 'nice-to-have' or 'don't-need'.

Wrap Up:
Thank customers for their participation and follow up with demo.

Document Results:
I would recommend having someone document your results. This is very important as you will likely forget some comments which can be extremely valuable in the future, especially if you pivot.

Ash Muarya has a book titled "Running Lean" which talks about this in further. Ash was the former CTO and friends with my Entrepreneurial Operations professor Kyle Murphy. Kyle has taught me critical skills about operations & execution of newly created ventures.