Customer Dev Labs
customerdevlabs.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2012
Customer Dev Labs is a startup blog on customer interviews, validating ideas, and using Mechanical Turk for market research.
What HN saysHN commenters recommend its customer interview post as a useful how-to, and cite its MTurk test of company names.
22HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
22stories submitted
455story points
7 years agolast shared
2012people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1How to (Scientifically) Pick the Best Company Name6 people · 29 points · first shared 2013 · 4 comments on HN
- 2How I Interview Customers5 people · 23 points · first shared 2013 · 2 comments on HN
- 3MTurk + Google News API = press4 people · 287 points · first shared 2013 · 111 comments on HN
- 4Show HN: Identifying, Segmenting and Contacting our Customers3 people · 12 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 5Crowdtesting: how many $'s is your idea worth?2 people · 15 points · first shared 2012 · 1 comments on HN
- 6Using mTurk to interview 100 customers (in 4 hours)1 people · 67 points · first shared 2012 · 25 comments on HN
- 7You've interviewed customers. Now what?1 people · 9 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 8What MVP should you be building?1 people · 6 points · first shared 2016 · 3 comments on HN
- 9Email interview experiment: Threatening Puppies (kinda) Works1 people · 2 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 10What I Learned about Press Hacking1 people · 2 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 11How many customers should you interview?1 people · 1 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 12Help Investors Believe you – show them Customer Quotes1 people · 1 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 13Attn Customers: answer my questions or I’ll kill these puppies1 people · 1 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 14What mvp should you be building1 people · first shared 2016
- 15How to send cold emails1 people · first shared 2017
What HN people wrote when they linked it
mgav · 2018-08-13
Check out https://customerdevlabs.com/
and "How to Run a User Interview" (Twitch's Emmett Shear) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAws7eXItMk
danwakefield · 2015-08-12
Benchmark it? These guys used amazon turk to decide which was best. http://customerdevlabs.com/2013/03/05/test-company-domain-name-with-mt…
jessmartin · 2019-05-17
This was the post that made the lights come on for me: https://customerdevlabs.com/2013/11/05/how-i-interview-customers/
After doing 10-20 of those interviews, I got pretty good at coming up with an internal "pain scale" - where this particular problem sits in terms of overall pain the customer is experiencing, and thus how much they are willing to commit to solving the problem.
tixocloud · 2019-02-24
Effectively, you're looking to do customer discovery. What you want to do is ask questions to learn more about the problem your customers have - save your solution in the back of your mind but understand what they are trying to accomplish.
Justin Wilcox's 5 simple questions helped a lot but practice makes perfect: https://customerdevlabs.com/2013/11/05/how-i-interview-customers/
Here's a link to additional resources: https://medium.com/lean-startup-circle/all-the-resources-you-need-to-m…
rharris · 2017-04-20
I hear you. There's a lot of guidance on the importance of talking to customers, but a dearth of information on how to do it.
Fwiw, I've become mildly obsessed with this topic, and have written up a couple articles that may help:
* How to talk to customers: http://customerdevlabs.com/2013/11/05/how-i-interview-customers/
* Which customers should you talk to first: http://customerdevlabs.com/2017/03/20/who-are-early-adopters/
* How to ask for conversations: http://customerdevlabs.com/2014/02/18/how-to-send-cold-emails/
calbear98 · 2014-01-28
Use trycelery.com and you can start taking pre-orders immediately, and see how much they are willing to pay.
http://customerdevlabs.com/makemoney
bernatfp · 2014-01-24
This is awesome. It reminds me of this (but automated): http://customerdevlabs.com/2013/09/24/google-news-api-mturk-press
You should take it one step further and automatize email sending to the authors collected.