Everything I wish I knew about customers interviews

I built my preview SaaS without doing any customer interviews. I didn't validate I was solving the right problem. The SaaS failed to generate money.

I learned too late the value of customer interviews. Good thing I'm starting a new SaaS, I can use those mistakes and learnings.

In case you haven't seen any of my previous posts, let me recap real quick:

I started a company almost 2 years ago. It failed. I made tons of mistakes and I learned A LOT.

Now I'm live-building my next thing:

- sharing all my mistakes

- sharing exactly what I'm doing day by day

My hope providing value to the people reading this. It's tons of fun for me and might be helpful for some. I'm putting all the posts I'm making in one central place. You can binge-read them [here](https://welldoitlive.beehiiv.com/)

As I mentioned in the beginning, in my previous startup I didn't do anything to validate the problem. I covered all the mistakes in my post yesterday, today I'm focusing on how I will do better this time.

I'll get some things wrong, but I will never make the mistake of not talking to people about the problems I'm solving. I don't want to spend another 2 years building something nobody wants.

Quick recap:

Over the past 4 days, I found a problem that is worth exploring:

I don't know how to create a high-converting landing page.

Because I'm building a product to solve a problem, is a good idea to formulate a hypothesis. I can ask questions to people to validate that the hypothesis is correct.

The hypothesis I have now is very vague, but it's enough to get started:

"People are willing to pay for a product that makes it very easy and quick to create high-converting landing pages."

I have a hypothesis, now how do I validate it? User interviews.

If you're not sold on user interviews, let me tell you why they are a secret weapon:

- can give you a pretty good sense if the problem is worth solving

- will tell you if some people are willing to pay for a solution to their problem

- might help you find your first users (this is HUGE)

I keep repeating this but I want to share everything about this journey. Here are the questions I will ask the people who will kindly agree to be interviewed:

1. "Please tell me, how you do create a landing page today?"

2. "How long does it take for a landing page to be created?"

3. "What is the hardest thing about creating a landing page?"

4. "why is it hard?"

5. "How often do you need to create a new landing page?"

6. "Why is it important for you to create landing pages?"

7. "How much does it cost to create one or more landing pages right now?"

8. "What if I could make the problem disappear? How much would you pay for this?"

As you can see:

• I am not trying to introduce my product.

• I am not trying to figure out how much to charge people.

• I am not trying to ask them to be my first customer.

I am trying to verify if my hypothesis is correct and if the problem is worth solving.

Remember I need to pay myself a salary as quickly as possible so I can continue working on this for a really long time.

For completeness's sake, I'm listing the few questions I know I will not ask. (Useful in case you are setting up user interviews and you want to know what not to ask)

I will NOT ask:

- "Will you use my product?"

- "What features would you want in a landing page builder"?

- "What would the perfect product look like to you?"

On top of that, I will avoid

- yes and no questions

- more than one question at a time

This is fantastic progress! Now that I know what I'm going to ask them, I have another big problem:

where do I find people who are willing to talk to me?

Good news first: 3 people reached out to me. They are willing to be interviewed. This is FANTASTIC news, I cannot wait to talk to them.

I would love to talk to at least 10 people so at least 7 to go.

(Shameless plug) if you're interested in being one of the people I interview, please let me know!

Where would I find 7 more people?

My strategy for this is to use LinkedIn and Reddit.

I have a pretty good idea for Reddit, so let's start there.

I'm in a few subreddits where I see tons of posts about people asking the community to roast their landing page.

I LOVE those kinds of posts. I think people doing that are so brave putting their work out for other people to critique. The hardest thing is to put your work out there for people to "comment on".

This also tells me that they might be unsure if their landing page is the best possible page. They might have the problem I'm trying to solve.

I'll message as many people as Reddit allows me.

In my experience people in general are nice but I don't want to leech off their generosity. I would like to start the conversation by giving something back. or at the very least, build some rapport.

I'll start looking at their landing page, their product, and their post. I will genuinely provide either feedback or congratulations on their launch. Something to give back to them for the opportunity to listen to what I have to say.

I want to give before I ask.

This might be the wrong segment of people to target, but most likely the most fun group of people to talk to. Worst-case scenario I'll make some new friends.

Next is LinkedIn. This is tricky and I never used likeding properly.

I've been an engineer all my life, I used LinkedIn to update my skill set when I was looking for a new job.

I don't have a strategy, so here's what I'll do:

- I'll start looking for people like me: solopreneurs, technical startup founders, SaaS owners

- I'll have a look at their profile, recent posts etc

- If I have something valuable to say to them, I'll engage with them. Remember we're asking for a favour, the least I can do I spend some time looking and what are they up to and provide something valuable to them

- I'll tell them about what I'm doing, live-building a SaaS in public

- ask them for 20 minutes of their time

Hopefully, with a mix of Reddit and LinkedIn, I can find 10 people who are willing to talk to me. Wish me luck!

I might get 0 user interviews. I might find 20. This is the beauty and the terrifying part of this phase. I'll tell you how it goes in the next few posts.

Before I sign off, there is one last thing I want to do:

These people I'm about to interview, are about to be the most special people for me. Their kindness and will to answer my question could be the beginning of a business for me. I need a way to demonstrate how special they are to me.

Normally I would ask if they wanted to join a WhatsApp group or a Slack. There I can update them on the progress I'm making. Unfortunately, I'm posting all in public so not sure that would be valuable enough.

The only thing I can think of is to provide a little SEO juice to their product if they have one. I'm posting every day on Reddit, LinkedIn, and on my newsletter. There is a chance that they can get something out of talking with me if I link out to their product.

This is just an idea, might be stupid, I don't know.

Have you done anything similar in the past? any idea what I can do to show how much I appreciate their help?

That's it for today.

I would love for this to be a 2-way conversation, I have some questions for you:

What do you think about this post?

What do you think about the hypothesis? is it a good one? would you have a different one?

Would you like to be part of the users I interview? Do you know of anybody that might be a good fit?

Please leave a comment to let me know! Thanks so much for reading.

As usual, company update:

✅ I have a problem to validate.

I have talked with 0 users.

I have 3 users willing to be interviewed on the list

I do not have a product.

I made 0$ in revenue.