My own business, Testivate, is an example of how interviews can help you to test out your assumptions and drive out waste. Testivate benchmarks the features on a website, comparing them to both competitors and best practice, and then provides a gap analysis and tailored action agenda for the website owner. When I created Testivate, my assumptions were:
- That executives in larger organisations [target market assumption]…
- …would pay a four-figure sum… [pricing assumption]…
- …for comprehensive benchmarks…
- … that would help them juggle clashing priorities, such as whether to invest in mobile or in video [customer need assumption]
I could have built the business on those assumptions, but instead I interviewed a range of people who looked like potential future customers. Through these interviews, I discovered that a range of my assumptions were false. So these interviews helped me avoid the wasted effort of building the wrong product. Even better, the interviews enabled me to develop a new view:
- That online small business operators [target market assumption]…
- …would pay a three-figure sum [pricing assumption]…
- …to quickly benchmark one aspect of their site, such as just mobile, or just video