Essays/linkedin/24-05-23 feedback

🧟‍♂️ Getting #feedback as early as possible is crucial to develop solutions that address a need. But it's our responsibility to generate actionable insights and improve on it.

One of the first challenges a #scipreneur faces is that it's very hard to judge whether the solution they are building is interesting for anyone else. We normally come from a solution-oriented mindspace, not from a problem-seeking one.

The only ones who can let us know whether we've hit a sweet-spot are our customers, but they won't spontaneously come to us with good ideas.

Triggering meaningful discussions and collecting actionable insights is our responsibility. However, it's an art that takes too long to develop.

The secret is, as always, in the preparation. If you know who you are talking to, you know what you should focus on. If it's the user of your device, but not the budget manager, focusing on cost may not be the best. Instead, learn about sample preparation pitfalls, or opinions on other instruments.

If you prepare well, you'll also know what do you want to learn out of the interaction. Are you trying to understand purchasing cycles in an industry, decision making structures, or validating your tech specs? Even at mature companies, every interaction with a customer is a learning opportunity.

The other rules, asking open-ended questions, asking 5 times "why" (or was it 6?), they are easy to understand and master. Defining the scope and getting results is much harder.

And then, you need to handle the feedback you receive. Just because someone believes something, it does not mean you need to act on it. Just because you think more of yourself than of your users does not mean you need to ignore feedback.

What is people really telling you? What opportunities lie ahead that you may be ignoring?

Once, I pissed someone off during a call. He ended up almost shouting at me: "I don't care about measuring size, I just want to know how many there are!".

I assumed counting was more important than size even before I entered into the call. He didn't know it until I forced him to think it through. Now I knew where the opportunity was: no one was counting properly. I also understood the challenge: people didn't realize they were not counting properly.

-- 👋 Hi! I'm @Aquiles.

I'm a scientist turned entrepreneur. I share insights on the challenges of #scipreneurship

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