Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at GV)

[@Alexjdenne]

Michael is an absolute legend. We went through his full bullseye process with him a few months back and it really aligned the whole business on the work we need to get done. It's also just incredible to sit on calls with him and watch him work as a researcher. Big fan - I hope we can get him back in to do more for us next year.

[@MMargolis]

Thanks @Alexjdenne!

[@hustlin_heev]

What a great video With concrete practical advice I am a solo bootstrapped B2b SaaS founder with 40 paying customers and I still am struggling to find my bullseye I think I’m gonna give this a try

[@GameThinkingTV]

What a great listen! Thanks Lenny & Michael for sharing your fantastic process. We do something similar in our own discovery process - hearing your process for finding "Bullseye Customers" is affirming & eye-opening. One of the best interviews yet!

[@TinyLifeTAKEOVER]

Having built a SaaS that was DOA, I needed this. 3 prototypes is blowing my mind. It stops you from hyper focusing on covering more and more use cases (the builder’s trap). Thanks for this

[@wasifzaki]

Thank you Lenny for bringing Micheal on the show! Hadn't heard of him before, yet in this one hour, he has convinced me to proof check my startup idea with this approach. 💯💯 The credit goes to your whole team, for the hard work they put in bringing these valuable people for us to benefit from. ❤

[@shan.abeyrathne]

What a treat! Thanks for sharing these insights and ideas.

[@lilyabello1919]

“What keeps you up at night?” Is a question I always ask. It is amazing what we both learn from it.

[@MoyoAjala]

Currently drafting my team's product development and venture studio action plan for next year and was fishing for new refreshing approaches. After watching this episode, I think I can taste success already!

[@effinbanjos]

w/r/t Figma - it seems to push me towards high fidelity prototypes. This is where I much prefer Balsamiq and other low fidelity wireframe tools, even hand-drawn. I also seem to recall some research suggesting users won't offer as (brutally) honest feedback when it looks like you put a lot of work into the prototype.

[@MMargolis]

That's definitely a risk if you show just one prototype instead of three. I seem to get plenty of brutal feedback. >< Prototypes can be simple, but I find it's important for them to be specific and to look realistic--even if they're flat PDFs. I want people react to and compare the concrete, specific details of the 3 value props as if they're real products.

[@effinbanjos]

​ @MMargolis Fair, and thank so much for taking the time to respond. I actually just sat down and took notes while listening to this episode because it was so densely packed with sound advice. I looked around and can find *no evidence* of said research - I think this was just an apocryphal story that I heard and never really fact checked O_o. The thing I have experienced with hi-fi is that users get hung-up on colors and font instead of core ideas. I also sort of wonder if these factors could subtly influence selection - like an inclination to pick the one with your favorite color. And ok, selfishly (here it is), the cost of low-fi just so happens to be lower and easier to iterate on. I should probably just get better at Figma - I'll defer to your vast experience on this one :). I really appreciate you sharing what has made you so successful. Thank you!

[@ajwilson6793]

Thank you both 🤩

[@g.4863]

Awesome. Thank you. A method that makes sense.

[@alux.experiences]

loved it

[@jeelanshahtlyr6076]

Michael, considering your vast experience with startups and UX research, if you could change one fundamental assumption or principle that the entire tech industry operates on today, what would it be and why? And if you had to completely start over in today's fast-evolving tech landscape, what one core principle or practice would you abandon entirely, and what radical new approach would you adopt in its place? How do you think these changes would reshape the future of startups and innovation?

[@MMargolis]

Those are big questions! :) It’s hard to give a one-size-fits-all answer for the entire tech industry, across domains and stages. A lot of founders and PMs worry that research will slow them down, but customer discovery can be fast, and will actually ACCELERATE your progress. Customer and product discovery can be more like a series of efficient, scrappy experiments rather than a long, frustrating fishing expedition. I'm biased towards the power of watching batches of qualitative, 1:1 interviews with bullseye customers as the fastest way to help your team see the world and your product through customers’ eyes. Instead of launching to learn, I prefer to build as little as possible to answer your most important questions and de-risk significant investments of time, money, and reputation.