In real-world startups, you must work at warp speed. You won’t have time for exhaustive research, so you adapt to get actionable insights fast.
User development is the foundation of product success — but most PMs struggle to do it well under real-world constraints. The actual job is to gather insights fast enough to inform development decisions without slowing the team down. You can’t wait weeks for focus groups or large surveys. Instead, you must adapt your approach to deliver clear, actionable customer knowledge at startup speed.
The trap is to skip research or do it poorly, then make bets based on assumptions or hearsay. I have watched thousands of PMs get stuck here. The difference between a product that hits and one that flops often comes down to how well you understand your users and buyers before you build.
Focus groups and surveys are overrated in startups
Except for very simple consumer apps, I avoid focus groups and online surveys. Focus groups often fail because a few participants dominate the conversation, wasting time without delivering shared insights. The differences between individuals in a small group are more interesting to me than their commonalities — but group settings don’t capture that well.
Online surveys impose fixed-choice answers that drown out nuance. The assumptions and biases baked into “choose an answer” models overwhelm the subtle textures of real user needs. You want to hear the unexpected — what users say when they are free to explain in their own words. You want to ask follow-ups to dig deeper.
Instead, I prefer balancing two approaches:
1. Extended, one-on-one, open-format interviews
Face-to-face if you can, else by phone. Prepare a list of open questions designed to elicit long responses:
- "Describe your needs in your own words."
- "How else would you solve this problem?"
- "How would you value a solution? What’s the natural pricing unit?"
- "What do you like and dislike about our current approach?"
The goal is to pan for golden insights hidden in unexpected user stories. Take excellent notes, share them internally, and listen for patterns. If you do three of these interviews per week, in 3-4 weeks you will know more about your customer base than anyone else on your team.
See http://mironov.com/getting_into for guidance on conducting these interviews.
2. Narrow, goal-directed, lean startup–style research on single issues
Suppose you suspect users struggle with your B2C sign-up flow. Development has proposed design fixes, but which are right? Now you have a focused problem.
Pull a list of relevant customers or prospects. Send each a personal email inviting 15 minutes for face-to-face, phone, or screen share. Confirm they fit your audience. Ask a few general background questions (from #1), then drill into what they were thinking or trying to accomplish at the moment they encountered the problem.
Be careful not to sound intrusive by repeating data you already have (for example, from system logs). This approach gets you urgent, specific feedback fast.
In both cases, invite a mix of users:
- Current customers
- Potential customers
- Influencers or advocates
- Random individuals who don’t know the product yet
Conduct interviews early in the morning if possible. Breakfast sessions are more cost-effective than lunch and participants tend to be more energetic. Compensate participants fairly — for example, ₹1500 per hour for in-person sessions (typically 2 hours) and a ₹400 gift card for phone participants to cover breakfast.
Bring rough wireframes and high-level product specs as part of your script. Encourage questions and short conversations throughout the walkthrough to keep users engaged and minimize Q&A at the end.
Include plenty of usability and behavioral questions such as “Do you know where to click for this?” or “How would you open that?” Track time spent on each screen or slide, normalizing for complexity. This helps identify where users get stuck.
Run at least two sessions for better measurement and averages. Debrief immediately after each session with facilitators and scribes. This practice earns credibility with developers: you can answer real questions with real customers fast enough to be relevant. Some jobs are almost as valuable as coding.
User research methods depend on product stage and company context
How you do user research varies by product maturity and company type. Early-stage startups move fast and get less time for research. Mature companies with higher cost of failure can afford deeper studies.
Consider these questions:
- Is it a consumer product or one with business stakeholders (partners, vendors)?
- Are you trying to learn about customer interests or observe actual user behavior?
- What is the time horizon for decision-making?
User development starts with a germ of an idea. Maybe customers have asked for a feature. Maybe you saw a competitor innovate. Maybe an idea struck you unexpectedly.
You define the idea simply, with a clear value proposition and understandable feature points. Socialize it with product, technology, sales, and marketing teams. Include other stakeholders to refine and improve the idea.
Size the market and opportunity. Write the press release as if the product is launching tomorrow. This exercise forces clarity and focus.
For more insight, see Marty Cagan’s Inspired and the SVPG article on assessing product opportunities. Naeem Zafar’s Market Research on a Shoestring is also a useful resource.
When to use broad quantitative and qualitative methods
If your idea is totally new to the world and high risk, and your organization is risk-averse with no pressure on speed or budget, you might proceed through sequential steps:
- Run surveys to gain quantitative insight into consumer perceptions and needs.
- Conduct focus groups to build qualitative understanding on survey learnings.
- Use focus groups to present mockups or competitive implementations to gauge consumer preferences and perceptions.
- Conduct eye-tracker focus groups with functioning prototypes where users complete tasks and then discuss perceptions.
- Run user testing sessions where individuals complete tasks with near-final prototypes while describing their thought processes. Record these sessions to analyze trouble points.
- Perform A/B testing by sending traffic to different implementations and analyzing impact on key metrics.
- Maintain ongoing analytics to track performance against KPIs and other metrics.
This approach provides rich data on user behavior, perception, and success rates. But it is overkill for most product refinements and small launches.
The bottom line: If the effort and risk are low, throw it out there and test. For larger efforts, get your customers lined up and sell the concept before building. Use research as needed to refine your implementation.
Buyer research is the other half of the equation
In B2B and enterprise contexts, users are only one half of the equation. You must also solve problems for the person who writes the checks.
The best way to get buyer insights is to sit in a room with them and ask targeted, probing questions. Your goal is to understand their problems, needs, and goals deeply.
This is easier if you already have relationships with these buyers. But focusing only on existing customers ignores the most profitable segment: those you haven’t sold to yet. You must spend most of your time and effort talking to potential customers.
This is difficult. Buying decision-makers are often senior, protected, and hard to reach. Executives screen out non-urgent meetings, and your invite may initially be seen as a sales pitch.
You must physically get to them, which may involve travel and expense. Approvals are often hard without precedent in your organization. They have to want to talk to you. A small gift card won’t cut it here.
Meanwhile, your sales team will want to join these meetings to sell, which invalidates the research. You want these conversations to be pull operations — after you have understood and solved their problems so well they have no choice but to buy.
Persistence pays off. When I first did this, I sent 40 cold LinkedIn InMails and got only one response.
Here is what helps:
- Have a real solution or at least a solid understanding of their core problem.
- Source a list of candidates from CRM, LinkedIn, social channels, and your network.
- Prioritize candidates you have second- or third-level LinkedIn connections to; introductions increase response rates.
- Contact others via phone, email, and social media in that order.
- Expect very low response rates.
- When you get an interview, prepare a pitch that shows you understand their domain and pain points succinctly:
“As a VP of X, I understand you experience pain dealing with Y because of Z. We are solving that problem and want your help.”
If you get many rejections, your problem may not be painful enough.
Plan what you want to learn in advance. Discover how they solve the problem today — even if it’s pen and paper or complex Excel sheets. Stay on track; time will fly.
Sales dynamics vary by company. A product-focused CEO will likely support this research; a sales-focused CEO may not. Communicate clearly that this is a long-term investment to improve your portfolio.
Done right, you will build a solid network of contacts and advisors, plus some new customers.
Synthesizing and communicating your research
Conducting research well is only half the job. You must also synthesize and convey your findings simply and clearly. If you fail here, your research is wasted.
Two tools I use repeatedly for market and competitive research are:
The 2×2 matrix
Originally a consultant’s tool, the 2×2 matrix distills complex landscapes into clear visual quadrants.
Steve Jobs used it famously. In 2007, he opened the iPhone launch with a 2×2 showing why competitors’ phones sucked. When he returned to Apple in 1997, he used a 2×2 (Consumer vs. Pros and Desktop vs. Laptop) to focus product strategy.
You create your own X and Y axes based on your competitive landscape. Then place your product and competitors in the appropriate slots.
This gives you a 100,000-foot view of where you fit.
Feature Gap Analysis
If the 2×2 is the aerial view, the Feature Gap Analysis is the 1,000-foot view.
Line up competing products in columns and value propositions or features in rows. Use “harvey balls” to grade each feature — the fuller the ball, the stronger the offering.
This quickly shows where your product is strong relative to competitors and identifies gaps to exploit.
You can apply as much art or science as you like to grading. This tool also guides marketing and branding: focus on benefits and differentiation.
Test yourself: Rapid user development scenario
You are a PM at a Series A SaaS startup in Bangalore building a workflow automation tool. The engineering team wants to fix a reported drop-off in the onboarding flow but are unsure which fixes will work. You have one week before the next sprint planning.
The call: How do you conduct user research to identify the right fix quickly?
Your reasoning:
Where to go next
- Learn how to conduct effective user interviews: User Research Methods
- Master buyer research techniques for enterprise sales: B2B Buyer Research
- Visualize your market position clearly: Competitive Analysis and Positioning
- Translate research into product decisions: Product Discovery and Validation
- Build and use personas to guide design: Persona Development