I see a lot of new people nowadays in the startup scene that give the weirdest advice.
Sometimes, I really think some of these guys haven’t even tried being in the trenches.
One of the more recent things I’ve heard was during a conversation where a founder asked their investor/advisor if he should be serving people that were asking for a solution that wasn’t in their original plans.
He said: “take every user you can get, just go for it and listen to what your customers are asking from you.”
When you hear that for the first time, you’d think it sounded just about right for a generic response but if you really think about it… DAMN! That’s wrong!
Why? Here’s why.
Your Startup Has Priorities
You are a startup.
Cash is tight, you have release cycles, new features being developed already, you already have a plan in place and you are solving something that’s already been proven with your MVP.
When you are just getting started, a majority of startups will take every user they can get their hands on since that’s essentially the name of the game. You attract as many people as possible with the problem that you are solving.
Sadly, when you open up your doors, you WILL get all sorts of people with all sorts of problems.
Some of them will have some weird suggestions. Some will demand a lot. Some will hijack your product to solve a problem that you didn’t really intend to solve. Some will selfishly want you to build something that solves a problem for them.
For the most part, these people are the ones you don’t want.
Of course, I’m not totally discounting that these people can somehow suggest something that can actually be your startup’s “second phase” (or a worthy addition to your current MVP) but how would you know when to listen?
How Do You Know When to Listen?
“But Dennis, we’re an agile startup, we can quickly implement changes without sacrificing much of our deadlines unlike big corporations.”
Sure, sometimes, you have users that will show you that there’s an acute need or maybe an even bigger problem.
In most cases, you guys already know about it but chose to not answer it yet.
What you should do is to gauge the suggestions and not just insert them into your pipeline without much thought.
I’m sure you know what I mean, User 1 suggests a “small thing”, then you insert it immediately to please the user.
User 2 suggests something that looks minor but it ended up taking up a bit more time.
By the end of the week, your progress for your planned release has been pushed back by days or a week.
You can’t afford that right now.
You’re MVP, for the most part, is good enough. People that want to use it and see the need to use it, will use it.
They will continue to, regardless if you add that minor thing.
Start compiling these suggestions (we use Trello to compile these) and once a week or when you can afford to, you and decision makers can weed these out to see which can fit in the timeline, which should be pushed back and which suggestions you need to throw away.
If you have analytics to prove the viability of the suggestion or if you can survey your users about a small feature that can be added, then that’s even better.
There must be a big enough demand, a logical connection to your current process or data to prove it, not just your gut feel. In many cases, these “urgent” or “critical” suggestions will lead you into a trap of solving a problem that’s only affecting a really small group of users, or worst of all, maybe just for him.
Don’t treat suggestions on the level of a critical bug. It’s most likely not on that level.
Remember, you are not in the business of solving one off problems for users.
Key Takeaways & You’re Take
As you open your doors to take in users, you will get all sorts of them, much like M&M’s… all sorts of colors, flavors, sizes and shapes.
You’ll get all sorts of demands, suggestions, feedback that they will make sound like it’s critical.
Remember your priorities. It doesn’t mean that you won’t be listening to your users, it just means that you will be filtering and prioritizing.
If they continue to demand things to solve problems that you aren’t solving now and threaten to leave (yes, this happens) then it’s clear that these are the users you don’t want.
Remember this line when you do get bombarded by demands:
“You are not in the business of solving one off problems for users.”
You are not in business to go out of business… you won’t be able to solve anybody’s problems like that.
How about you? Have you dealt with users that you ultimately figured out as those that you don’t want? I’d love to hear your stories.
Snap me your story or leave a comment below!
