04. Balancing user feedback

Estimated Time

• Reading: ~8 minutes
• Video: ~17 minutes
• Activities: to be completed prior to the next week

Insights

• Focus on developing and improving your core features
• Not all customer feedback is equal — find your high-value users
• Customer requested feature development should not be used as a sales tactic
• Find a balance that works for you and continue to make daily progress

• Founders need to get to know who the users are in order to better understand the feedback
• Why did they pay to use your product?
• How they are using the product/service?
• What do your users need?
• Are you meeting the needs of the user?
• Collecting feedback from your users is critical to the adoption and growth of your product
• As we've discussed in detail, you should be prioritizing customer interactions as a founder
• But keep in mind, not all customer feedback should be weighted equally
• It is essential to understand which customers you are talking to and which input to consider for your roadmap
• Create a group of your top customers
• It is likely your top users understand your product as well as (or better than) some of your employees
• This isn't ideal, but it is a reality
• Does your sales team log in to your product regularly?
• When was the last time your leadership team or advisors were active in your product?
• Another reason sharing customer use cases with your team is valuable
• So who are the top 5-10% of your customers?
• You can measure this "top group" by revenue or engagement
• Users who are using your product the most (engagement)
• Users who are paying the most amount of money (revenue)
• You probably want to blend these together for a well-rounded representation
• Unless you are collecting feedback on a specific metric that makes sense to isolate them
• Building for the customer is usually a winning strategy - especially when you know they are the most active or most invested customers
• You are solving their problems, so getting input from the most valuable cohorts is a smart place to start
• Listen to your customers, document their feedback, and bucket common concerns or suggestions together to drive roadmap decisions
• Keep in mind that customers don't always know what they want
• This is another reason it is important to get to know your ideal customer profile deeply
• You can then blend your expertise and product vision with the problem they are trying to solve and really delight them
• Even if they can't verbalize exactly what they want
• Customer feedback isn't intended to convert customers
• You are building a company and a product, not a consulting service
• When it comes to bucketing feedback there are a few things to consider
• Did the user offer you the suggestion or did you request it?
• Gain an understanding of the types of suggestions that come in without your request to determine how to proceed
• These users are oftentimes not in the group of value customers
• This feedback should not be ignored, but place more emphasis on the feedback coming from a valuable user
• Don't get bogged down by focusing on the casual users
• Especially a free user without skin in the game
• These users are often quick to offer suggestions or complain without being invested
• How you are talking to customers is just as vital as who you are talking to
• Customer surveys are a great place to start because they are simple to create and implement
• A few things to keep in mind when creating a survey
• Keep the survey short
• Only ask one question at a time
• Before sending the survey review and remove unnecessary questions
• Have a clearly defined goal of what you want to accomplish with the survey
• Remove all questions whose answers will not get you to your goal
• It doesn't have to be only multiple-choice; use open-ended questions as needed
• Collecting qualitative data not easily available in surveys is another great way to gather feedback
• Schedule recurring calls with key customers
• Keep it very casual to build rapport
• Begin the calls with open-ended questions like:
• "What can we help you better understand about our product?"
• "What is working for you?"
• "How can we help you be more efficient with our solution?"
• "What do you wish it did?"
• "Is there anyone else you'd like me to help you onboard at our next meeting?"
• Help them get more team members using your product — you'll save them work and ensure the early adopters are up to speed on your product
• This call can also be a great time to show off any new features or collect initial feedback on roadmap items
• This should be done after you have provided value to the customer
• Can be phrased: "We have some items on our roadmap that I think you might find really interesting - would you like to check them out quick?"
• Similar to launching your MVP — you can simply show mockups and ask what they think about this new feature in the works
• Often the customer will feel special that you're having an intimate conversation and requesting their insights
• Record the conversation for internal review
• Build these relationships with early customers
• Frequent conversations will build trust and credibility
• Encourage users to tell you what you are doing wrong
• Honesty from your most active and invested users is invaluable
• This feedback will help drive product development and lessen the change of churn
• Balance feedback with product vision
• Fitbod does a great job of balancing feedback with their core development
• They keep the product vision at the forefront but are willing to experiment with features suggested by customers
• The three streams of product development they focus on at their high-growth startup are:
1. Core Feature Development
2. Experiment-based Feature Development
3. Importance of product-led growth
• Core feature development
• These are features that your product cannot exist without
• For example, video processing for YouTube
• The core features of your product can not be neglected for one-off suggestions from users
• Feedback on your core features should be considered over requests for new features
• You must do one thing extremely well and that should be your main focus of development
• What is your main value proposition? What is your one simple sentence?
• You must build around this first and foremost

"The number one thing I end up talking to people about is, how can we do fewer things, but do them faster and better." - Charles Hudson

• Experiment-based feature development
• Be careful as this is where startups can "overbuild"
• You never want to go on a feature death march where you build without a clear purpose until you run out of money
• Avoid what Jason calls "founder ADHD" and wanting to build the newest shiny thing simply because you are excited about it in the moment
• The experiments you try need to be with a purpose
• Keep in mind that a vision or product without users is not a company
• As much as you need to be focused on your vision, if people aren't using the product the company won't succeed
• Listen to the users, find product-market fit for your core features, then consider which additional features to experiment with
• You can leverage experiments and customer feedback to define parts of your roadmap
• This is outside of core feature development
• Bucket user feedback based on their suggestions
• Identify alignment with your vision and across your valued customers to prioritize which to try first
• Keep the MVP mindset for this feature development
• Implement the experiment quickly, test the new feature with users, and gather feedback
• Make quick decisions (based on the metrics you define beforehand) to move forward with additional development or cut the experiment
• Do not be afraid to delete unused features or unsuccessful experiments
• The Lean Startup has an entire chaptered entitled "Experiment" that touches on this exact concept
• Ries dives deep on questions like "which customer opinions should we listen to, if any?"
• And he reiterates the scientific method of entrepreneurship: "If you cannot fail, you cannot learn"
• He suggests that you should treat each experiment like an MVP
• Start small but continue to think big picture
• Implement changes, iterate, and always be learning
• I would highly suggest rereading chapter 4 from The Lean Startup for more insight on experiments
• Product-led growth
• "Product-Led Growth is defined as a go-to-market strategy that relies on using your product as the main vehicle to acquire, activate, and retain customers."
• As defined by Wes Bush founder of ProductLed and thought leader in the space
• This method is centered around letting your product drive sales by making it easy for users to start using it and understanding the value

• There could be an entire module on product-led growth (but that is slightly out of scope for this program)
• If you are interested in learning more about it I'd highly suggest checking out Wes's book as well as his website
• Book: Product-Led Growth How to Build a Product that Sells Itself
• Website: Product Led
• The ProductLed Blog
• Free Trial vs Freemium Quiz
• Community
• Free Training
• Fitbod does a great job of blending their product vision with testing user feedback
• They are focused on those three streams of development while staying true to their roadmap principles
• The simplicity of Fitbod's 4 roadmap principles are a huge part of their growth and one I would consider implementing in some form at your company
• Their four principles are:
1. Focus on Craftsmanship
• Build something that you're proud to share with your friends and family
• Build something that you can happily use yourself
• Allen and Jesse were Fitbod's first two power users
• They built a product they needed and would use
• This focus on craftsmanship is across their product
2. Always make progress
• Small steps in any direction are better than no steps
• Each iteration of the product is an improvement and offers an opportunity to learn and improve
• Keep in mind, that done is better than perfect
• Done is never really done — so get the product, new feature, etc. in front of users and gather feedback
• Reid Hoffman famously said:
• "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late!"
• This applies beyond the first version, to new features and experiments
• But should not proceed the first principle — focus on craftsmanship
• This is one of Jason's key focuses also — he is always encouraging founders to get just 1% better every day
3. Leverage core differentiators
• Prioritize features that leveraged and highlighted core differentiators
• It is important to be aware of your competition but to not obsess over them
• Make your core features faster, better, easier to use, etc.
4. Delight early adopters
• Listen to customers and deliver
• Constant improvements and iterations build trust with early users
• Talk to them regularly
• It is important to find a blend of product vision and customer feedback that works for you
• But prioritizing your core features should always come first
• And adding new features should not be used as a sales tactic
• Users who say they "need just this one little thing" and they will buy, will always need just one more thing...
• Focus on what you do best and delight the users that have the problem you solve for
• Prioritize on improving your core features!

"You have this bundle of energy as a founder; we just need to make it into a laser, not a grenade." - Jason

• In other words, do fewer things, but do them faster and better
• Jason continuously reiterates with our portfolio companies...
• When you find something that works double down!
• When you strike oil, keep drilling!
• Improve the digging tools to be more efficient
• Create faster augers and bigger wells for the oil
• Don't start looking for diamonds!
• Focus on improving the core features every single day while listening to your users and experimenting with their suggestions
• Find a balance that works for you and keep building

Additional Resources

• How to Balance Focus on One Customer at a Time Versus New Features for Many?
• Startup Basics: Knowing when to pivot
• Scaling Your Startup "Delighting Your Customers": NPS, PMF, focus, feedback, interviews, and tools
• Fitbod's Allen Chen & Craig Zingerline of Growth University talk about growth metrics
• Jesse Venticinque of Fitbod on with Rahul Vohra of Superhuman talk about product-led growth and retention

Activities

• Document who they are in a CRM or spreadsheet

• Can be more than one
• The meeting doesn't need to be long, 10-20 minutes is fine
• Find a cadence that works for them — once a week, every other week, once a month

• This should be based around your core features at this point

• Which of your core features will help you stand out from the competition?