How do you know if your startup is solving a critical problem?
You can survey your users, conduct user interviews, and run a/b testing experiments to try to get your answer. No matter what method you use, parsing out reality is really hard, especially for entrepreneurs (see Reality Distortion Field & I Don’t Know).
I was talking to Joshua Porter, my co-founder at Performable, today, about a certain app we use internally and how bad and confusing their UI is. Despite this, we use the app almost every single day. And we’re not alone — they have tens of thousands of customers.
Why do we continue to use this app? Because it solves a critical problem; it’s a utility we need to run our business and, despite its shortcomings, the app is better than anything else we’ve tried.
So how do you know if your startup’s product is solving a critical problem? After years of trying to figure this out at multiple startups I’m starting to get the hang of it. 
If you repeatedly hear any of the following comments, chances are you are not solving a critical problem:
- “If you made your app easier to use I would start using it.”
- “I’m really busy right now but I’ll start using your app soon.”
- “If your app was cheaper I would start using it.” (contributed by Josh)
Sounds familiar? Is it time to admit you’re in trouble? Don’t panic, just stop now and reevaluate whether you need to resegment your product/audience, change your pricing, or pivot your entire product.
Question: How did you figure out that no one cared about your product? (I’d love to hear about it in the comments.)
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Good ideas but I think the volume of those types of responses in regards to overall product usage need to be analyzed before making rash decisions.
For example, if your product has 10,000 active users and you receive 5-10 of those types of responses each week, I dont think thats enough to warrant a pivot, or even re-segment.
I think a better gauge of if your product sucks is the attrition data on your users (how many use it once/never after signing up) using cohort analysis. Although this won’t get you “what” sucks about your product, it will give you a general consensus of whether people find enough value in it to continue using it after the first few uses.
Vin – I totally agree, especially with your comment on the importance of cohort analysis (see my Data-Driven Startups post).
My post is focused on the very early days of your product development before you have enough users and time-series data for a proper cohort analysis.
Thanks for the great comment.
What’s the useful app with the sucky UI that you’re talking about?
Awesome post. I just RT with my highest recommendation. I wish all of my entrepreneurs would read this post.
Clearly, Basecamp.
Chris-Thank you!
That means a lot coming from you. I’ve been a big fan of your blog for a long time.
Cheers,
David
Love the link to HN.
Thanks Andrew, I’m pretty sure I stole that idea from you if I’m remembering correctly. It should come with attribution.
David, loved reading your post – actually, I did hear at least 2 out of 3 of your comments with regard to one of my previous products
.
To your question, here is my criterion:
1. Create a landing page that describes the upcoming product and lets visitors sign up for alpha
2. Promote it (bloggers, meetups, one-on-one interviews with potential users, etc.).
3. Give yourself one month. If during the last week of this period you don’t see at least 5 people signing up for your alpha daily (without you talking to them directly), pull the plug.
-Eugene
@Vlaskovits provided a good example at Market By Numbers:”To wit, his site had gone down for a few hours, and he hadn’t known about it. In the interim, there had been nothing but silence. None of his users had squawked or had made it publicly known that the site was down and they were angry/frustrated/furious/going to switch providers/fed-up-with-this etc., etc.”
Great post David. And I would add:
4. “I’ve never heard of it. Who’s using it.”
We are, after all, risk-averse, socially-influenced creatures.
I would say that any sign that a customer is dilly-dallying is good evidence that you are not solving a critical problem. Critical problems are urgent and they can practically kill when not solved. Just gauging the relative bargaining positions of the parties would reveal whether the problem is big or critical enough.
I’m going to make my guess: Salesforce?
Tim,
I wasn’t referring to Salesforce this time, but that’s a great guess since I using that application has such a hard-to-use UI.
David
This article gave me a very good perspective. Thank you!
Dude the link to HN is *brilliant*! Mind if I follow your lead on that one? I love it!
DROdio