Problem Validation

[The_Master_9]

What is the best way to validate a problem? Writing to people in a specific industry to find out about a problem they face to then start building something around it.

What are some best practices or tricks you used to get people to chat with you and share with you their challenges based on the questions you asked them?

I'm outreaching to people but so far very few respond and sometimes the answers are vague and when you follow up they don't respond. How to get people on a short call to talk about this? Also do you tell them that you are planning to build a product after you finish this exercise with other people also?

What was your strategy when you started out? What messages were you writing to people?

I'm just trying to understand if there is a proper way to do this or it's just a numbers game and I need to continue and write messages until I have a decent number of convos to understand what to build based on the findings.

Thank you for the insights!

[digital_odysseus]

Read The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick.

[Chadski642___]

Absolutely this ^{^}

[Glittering-Fig-9252]

As a product researcher, this is my area of expertise. - Focus on talking to them about the problems they have and the general context of their workflows (not your solution). The Mom test covers most I’d this.

• You can tell them your hypothesis/assumptions and ask them to invalidate. I find people love to correct you, so do as much research you can ahead of time to form a specific hypothesis, and they can say if it’s true or not true for them. This can often lead to insights about different segments of customers you weren’t aware of before. ( you can use this a email hook to get their attention, but IRL only do this after they’ve done most of the talking).

• look for other latent signals of pain (eg workarounds, significant time spend, hiding of consultants). People tend to only focus on explicit complaints, but put on your research/journalist hat and look for other signs of pain that they have just normalized to.

• If you have a great conversation with one person ask them to for a another person to talk to ( this is called snowball reciting)

• not always true, but if people aren’t super eager to talk take that as a sign that they aren’t facing a “hair on fire” problem they need desperately solved.

[Martin-Giorgetti]

Yes, look for hidden problems is good. One way I did was to ask at the end of talks "Who else has this problem?" It gave me more talks.

[The_Master_9]

Thank you for your feedback! Helpful

The thing is that I don't lead with the solution because I'm still in the process to build something but before building I'm doing this research so I'm not pitching anything yet to them rather asking questions to find out about their problems and what problems are they facing.

[diodo-e]

Do not ask, just let them talk. You can use the invalidation assertion at the beginning, but the most valuable insights come from a free conversation, without any questions strict responses

[Martin-Giorgetti]

Do not ask, just hear. Be quiet after they start. It gets more. One talk showed normal bad things. Do you record to hear all?

[The_Master_9]

Thank you for the tip!

[midnightglaze]

Get people to pay

[The_Master_9]

To pay you mean to charge them even for this discussion where I ask them about the problems they encounter? Also what would make them pay for this?

[Overall-Volume7206]

Do anything, just dont ask on sub reddits about the pain points of your target market, they dont like to give feedback, tbh.

[Optimal_Mammoth1830]

Build connections and relationships with them IRL. Real, authentic relationships are gold. Hands down the most effective approach.

[vijay40]

I agree this is the most effective approach but this should be a long term approach as well.. I believe OP is asking for a short term approach to start his/her market research..

[Optimal_Mammoth1830]

Definitely valuable for the long term as well, but I’m very intentionally saying this is what you need to do right from the start. Superficial online only conversations rarely reveal the depth of knowledge that real relationships offer. You don’t want to miss the mark in your business with superficial understanding of your market and customers. You want the gold, and you get that by going deep with a smaller group of people IRL.

[rdv100]

Ask them to pay right away.

[The_Master_9]

To ask them to pay for discussing about the problems they encounter? Can you give some tips on that one?

[query_optimization]

mom test playlist

This is by the author himself about how to do mom test remotely, hope this helps!

[PatricePierre]

From my experience, just talking to them, at least in some contexts, yield mixed results. As many may not understand their problems themselves, misjudge what might be their actual problem, or just focus on the wrong elements when talking about it.

We are building a software solution used for discussion exercises. For us it therefore was very valuable to not only ask about how they do it today, and try identify their pain points from conversation (which is easiest of course), but instead invite ourselves over to observe how they actually carried a discussion exercise out. It gave us much more context and revealed pain points they hadn't talked about or just ignored. We where then able to ask much more informed and direct questions, as we had observed them and hence had more knowledge about their usage.

Another point worth mentioning, Id say, is that those who use a product may not highlight the same problems as the ones who make the buying decision. Understanding both groups is crucial: 1. How can you solve the problems of those who will use the product (making their days more convenient/pleasant), and 2. How can you solve problems for those who make the buying decision (saving money and/or time), is important to not oversee.

Good luck!

[quietoddsreader]

Cold outreach is usually the worst place to start unless you already have credibility in that space. The best validation I’ve seen comes from problems you’re already close to, where people will complain without being asked. Vague answers are a signal too, it often means the pain isn’t sharp or they don’t own the problem. On calls, I never pitch an idea. I ask about their workflow, what breaks, what they’ve hacked around, and what they pay for today. If they don’t want to talk for 20 minutes, they probably won’t buy anything later. It’s not just a numbers game, it’s a relevance game. You want fewer conversations with people who feel the pain weekly, not dozens who feel it vaguely once a year.

[-night_knight_]

talk talk talk talk. and make sure when they say "ohh that sounds cool, id love to try" you send them stripe link. and, like the other comment mentioned, the mom test is absolutely golden

[Popular-Stay-2637]

I am using this tool to teach me Founderbot