Lean Customer Development

Chapter 6. What Does a Validated Hypothesis Look Like?

At first people would tell me, “That’s a good idea,” and I would get excited. But after doing a few interviews, I would see some people have an a-ha moment and start talking and talking excitedly. The more interviews I did, the more I felt I could tell the difference between people who were trying to be nice and people who really had a problem that I could solve.

—Bartosz Malutko, Starters CEO

Now that you’ve started doing customer development interviews, you’re probably impatiently awaiting some answers. You created focused and falsifiable hypotheses, you found people to talk to, and you were disciplined in asking open-ended questions and letting the customer be the expert. Now is the time to start taking what you’ve learned and using it to guide your decisions.

In this chapter, we’ll talk through how to get reliable answers from your interview responses. You’ll learn why you should be a temporary pessimist, when to distrust what you’re hearing, and how to reduce bias. We’ll also cover:

• Sharing the story with your team

• How many interviews you need

• What you should be learning after 2, 5, and 10 interviews

• What to do if your interviews aren’t going well

• How to recognize a validated hypothesis

What does validating a hypothesis mean? Does it mean you have a guaranteed product success? Does it mean that you cannot build anything until you’ve completed enough interviews? Does it mean that you can stop doing customer development now?

No, no, ...