Validate Products By Getting To "No"

At a certain point early in a company, the temptation is to go out and have a lot of product discovery calls.

We think of a potential user, we think of what their pain might be, and the temptation is to go to them and say,

"Tell me what would make your life easier? What's your problem right now?" 

The flaw in that thinking is that that person might give you something useful, but they might start talking about a problem they have with their brother-in-law.

Right?

It's really hard to get useful information out of such a vague question. And even then, it's really just their opinion. What do they know? 

There's a better way to validate our product in a market, and that is to get somebody to say no to us as quickly as possible.

When we find out what they're willing to say no to, we find where we need to about-face. It creates guardrails for our product roadmap.

So the better way is to bring forward a product that is as baked as it can be, present it to them and say,

"Will this help? I heard you have this problem in your industry, and I made this. Do you want to buy this?"

And they'll look at it and say, "No, I don't want to buy that because it's black."

And then you go, great, okay, I'll paint it blue.

"Okay, now do you want it?"

And they'll say, "Yeah, now I want that."

See, in the same amount of questions, we just arrived at a much more clear and useful progression of our product roadmap than if we had asked, "Tell me about your problems."

The key is to commit to a point of view.

Bring forward as good a solution as you can, and let the customer tell you why that solution is no good.

We can back our way into validating our product by getting people to say no to us.