♞ Focus on unhappy users

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Is this the key to building better products?

For over a decade now there has been a standard formula for building products in the tech industry. Build it, get feedback from evangelists, iterate, improve, grow.

This formula has been used by the most successful companies but is it possible that there is another better way of building and iterating your product? One that would also be more likely to help you raise venture capital?

Let’s discuss…

Recently, I met a founder who told me about the way that they build their product, and it blew my mind.

In short, instead of getting feedback from those who love his company, he was getting feedback from those who hated it.

Like many startups, he sent out questions to users about their experience, but instead of focusing on the founders who liked his product, he spoke to those who didn’t and aimed to fix their issues.

What he found was that when you speak to those who love your product, their recommendations and advice tend to make the product more niche and specific to their needs. They like the general service but wanted something built for them. On the contrary, when he spoke with customers who weren’t happy, often they wanted to like it but had issues with the UI, workflows, loading times, etc. All things that didn’t change the core functionality but made the product harder to use. The result of focusing on the negative reviews was that the company could make smaller/easier changes, which had a larger impact on customer satisfaction than the larger/more challenging changes his most loyal customers wanted, which were hit or miss with the rest of his customers.

I also spoke with some VCs about this, who all said that a founder implementing this strategy would be more likely to raise. The reason? They are used to dealing with and implementing changes from negative criticism; this is a trait that investors look for and a trait that is required to raise when that process involves plenty of negative feedback.

I have yet to try this myself, but second-hand knowledge indicates that this is a new, untested strategy that could yield better results than our existing methods.

Are you looking to grow your business? Here is how I can help:

📱 Book a Strategy Call to get 1:1 feedback on your pitch, pitch deck and/or fundraising strategy. (If you need general startup advice, then reply to this email, and I’ll let you know if/how I can help.)

Onwards and Upwards,

Liam Gill