YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Margolis

lines on the record: 108
first: 2024-12-01
most recent: 2024-12-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, totally. Just tell me your stories. How did you use this? What did you use it on? What worked? What didn't? How should we fix it Like we're excited that we were able to open source this, that GV was able to do that. And so part of that is help me update it and fix it.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So learn morefaster.com. You can go grab a free copy of the book. There's all kinds of demo videos of me doing interviews. There's all kinds of worksheets and resources. They're using a really nerdy researcher playlist there. So please just go grab stuff. It's all free. Like again, I'm not selling anything. I'm just really eager to get people to try this and use it. Please tell me in terms of how you could help me tell me your stories. Try it. Let me know what works, how you adapt it, how it applies even to places that aren't early stage startups. I assume some of this is relevant there. So please let me know. Ways you can reach me to let me know is Michael at learnmorefaster.com. You can just directly send me a note there. I can't guarantee I'll reply to everybody, but I'll read it all. And I'm on LinkedIn is probably a really great place to reach me.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About those kind of opportunities. And also, just kind of curious, I don't know, to hear from some of your listeners if they're doing some of this in those spaces.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As I talk to people who come kind of from that tradition, I don't know how else to describe it, they're doing similar work, but they don't seem to describe themselves as product managers. They have other kinds of titles. They come from like patient education. They have these other titles, but they're doing similar kinds of work. And so, but they come kind of from this other place. And so, and they talk about TPPs target product profiles. Right, it's like this different language in this different world to me, but it's the same things, the same methods and the same stuff. So the idea of bringing some of these methods there, as I've been getting to do more recently, is really exciting to me because it feels like there's a partly feels a little greenfield and partly it just feels like the impact there is huge, right, for some of those things. So that's something that I've just been thinking a lot about recently is just kind of excited.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Encourage more people to accrue onto a clinical trial? How do we think about a clinical trial as a product and streamline that and make sure we're targeting the right people and increasing the number of people who are getting on there? So what's been interesting is as I work with teams, I mean, talk about expert teams”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing I've been thinking about and recently getting to experiment with, which I'm pretty excited about, is to how to apply these methods in biotech. Big piece of the GV portfolio is in biotech, developing new therapies, new treatments That's a very different looking kind of business than a lot of digital enterprise consumer kind of products that I work with Think is really interesting is as I work more with those people, and so those are years, and they're doing science. So nobody's calling me when they're doing science. Like, they don't need that help. They get to a point where there is some productization of it. You need to figure out like, oh, actually, how is this going to fit into a physician's workflow? How will patients react to this relative to some other possible treatment or other things that are out there? How do we”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the other thing that you alluded to is confirmation bias, and we encourage people in the watch party. We give people kind of rules about how to listen, and we kind of encourage people to make it okay to kind of police each other a little bit and jokingly like, oh, it sounds like you're confirming your own bias about people would do this thing that you thought they would do, you know, try to keep each other honest about what you're actually hearing and try to be as neutral and objective about what you're hearing.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Described, I do these two part interviews. So that first part is having people describe and explain past experiences, what they've done, what's important to them, et cetera. I put much more weight in that as like building the trajectory of what will this person accept or value or avoid, what do they think are barriers? To then showing a prototype like, oh, I would totally. What you just described to me, so I'm going to be somewhat skeptical. Of your prediction of what you would do or what you think might happen. We're all terrible. That's not about the customer. Like we're all terrible at this, predicting what we're going to do. And so I just put much more weight in like, what has this person shown and demonstrated in the past as their behavior and their attitudes and opinions? And so I really try to. Teams to anchor more on that”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And ideally, you get through going through this process, what I want to do is get to a point where somebody, a team can narrow down to a point where actually there's one or two attributes that you realize later. Like, that's the thing. Oh, it's people on specialty medications that are refrigerated cold chain. All the other stuff Maybe not as important. Like, you figure out that's the distinguishing characteristic, and so now if I have some giant funnel or a set of leads or all these things I need to prioritize, I can streamline all this other sales motion or something else that I'm doing. I'm like, that's for now. Like we'll expand it. But for now, that's how I'm going to prioritize people. There's some rubric or some couple questions or characteristics that are really the key ones.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so whenever that happens, I always kick myself. I'm like, the team took control of the recruiting because it was their customers. And I just wasn't picky enough or we didn't narrow it enough or they included some people who were like experts that they already know and they talk to all the time. It didn't like get what we wanted. And that can be frustrating. So you just have to really be disciplined and picky About having the right people in there.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The time that it doesn't work as well? Times I get through it, and you're just like, ugh, that just didn't work well, it's because, for one reason or another, we did not. Select specifically, and we didn't recruit specifically enough and weren't picky enough about bullseye customers. And so, if you end up with a combination of people who was a little mushy, like you let the bullseye bleed a little too much. In the end, you're like, yeah, I'm not sure what the conclusions are to draw here. It just feels mushy.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is Yeah, I mean, Way I like to what we found, because sometimes we do this at a maximum we had 40 people show up. That's still our record. Which is awesome. Like, the more the merry, like, I want the whole team to see this because part of the shortcut of the watch party is I'm not doing a report. I don't need to go persuade or explain people what happened. You all saw it and we went through it together and everybody's aligned and gets what's happened. But it can make some of these other aspects of the process a little unwieldy. So what becomes important is to define like who's the core product team? Everybody's welcome. But there's a core product team who's probably taking notes and like also for us as the outsiders, we know those are the opinions. That's who's really building this thing, who's making those decisions and is going to have to own this and have to build it or do whatever's actually do all the work. So distinguishing about like who is that core product team, they need to really be there for all of it. Other people, if there's some other engineer on another project and they want to come in and see one or two, awesome. Love it.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is connected, and kind of where they are on their journey to be ready to buy this thing. Like, oh wait, they're not ready yet? Like, wait, right, they're not there yet, or we haven't figured out who the right people are who are the bullseye, but people overestimate those kinds of things. And it's really common blind spots that we find over and over across a lot of businesses with expert teams.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The curse of knowledge. So I'm working with lots of teams who are deep experts in their space, right? I'm not. I'm always like showing up as the noob, but like, okay, what is your business? What are we doing? But they have deep expertise. And when somebody has deep expertise, it's very difficult to imagine that other people don't know what you know. It's very hard to. Kind of put yourself in their shoes, right? And you just think, well, doesn't everybody know this? Or maybe even, you know, doesn't everybody know this? And so What that leads to is these key blind spots that are very common, which is there's an overestimation of how much your customer knows about the thing, maybe how big a problem they even perceive it to be, how much they're willing to pay for it.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's this other thing that I think is worth mentioning that I've come across, which be when we do this set of predictions. So again, it's across all different kinds of businesses, all different kinds of domains. Certain patterns that I've noticed that show up over and over about mispredictions, like there's a pattern of the kinds of things that show up over and over that are, I think it was kind of these common blind spots. Think it's attributed, I can attribute it to this, there's this concept of”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Quite frankly, just helps show the value of the research. We learn things. Or maybe we didn't. Maybe you were all right, which is awesome. And now we know we can move forward twice as fast.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A snapshot of what we wanted to learn. And then what happens is after we go through the big takeaways, at the end of the whole study, it's very valuable to go back and say, how does what we learned compared to what you thought? Because there's this, any researchers out there listening to this will be familiar with this idea. There's this hindsight bias that happens, which is as you've gone through the process, it's very difficult to remember what you didn't already know this. After you've gone through a research study, very often people are like, well, that we. Let's look back at a day ago what we all thought. And we actually have learned a lot, which is awesome. Like, that's the goal. We've learned it an enormous amount. And it's not to catch anybody out, right? But it's really valuable to have this snapshot and to.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this is really valuable for a bunch of different reasons. So it's a way to capture a snapshot before we do the interviews of like, what do you actually think is going to happen? And we have to push people to be specific. It's not, oh, we'll find out what they think of our concept. Like, yeah, yeah. I know we're going to learn that, but what do you actually think is going to be the outcome? People will prefer ASAP delivery of their medications and whatever is your hypothesis of what's going to happen here. And that helps me do a couple things. One is it helps me make sure that I'm tailoring the interview guy and everything the right way because it's another check. I'm understanding what you want to get out of this”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even though these are all teams who've said, we talked to our customers all the time, we go through this and they're always like, oh, yeah, this looks really different than what we were doing. And we didn't know this stuff. One of the other things I want to mention is we do this thing before the watch party where we get everybody to predict what they think they're going to learn.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's a way to grab a snapshot from the whole team of like, what did we really learn? You know, this was the important things that we had set out to do and what did we learn? And it captures that. So then again, that fills out a big spreadsheet and we then review that the decider kind of goes through it and talks about what are the key patterns, what are the things that we've learned here as a team. And there's this remarkable amount usually of consensus, of alignment about like, what is this? What do we need to do next? What I love seeing is that, quite frankly, one of the most common things across all of these businesses, all these sites, all these studies is that one of the things that people say we need to do next is more research.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The very last thing at the end of the day after the final debrief, we do a big takeaways form. So I create a Google form and it just is basically like how many interviews did you watch just to check? And then what's your first big takeaway second, third? How would you adjust your definition of the Bullseye customer here? And kind of what do you think are the next steps or what are your big questions, open questions and concerns? And so each person then takes five, ten minutes independently, separately, individually, quietly. Just everybody mutes their video and fills that out.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those are not the questions that I'm asking in the interview, but they're the things, again, these key questions that we wanted to learn, which is different from what I'm asking. And so we're just capturing in that half hour the decider, whoever has kind of owns the product or the founder is leading that because they're the decider and they're leading and getting input from everybody and filling in and answering those questions. So then you can imagine you have that first column is that set of questions. So those are the rows are the questions. And then each participant is another column. So we're doing participant one. We're capturing it after the second one. So we end up with a detailed notes. We have the recording of my interview. Like those are the thickest, deepest levels of this. Then we're distilling it down into this debrief sheet for each one. And so then you have a spreadsheet that's like the high level stuff. You can look across it at the end of the day.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I get a question like that, it could go a certain way, as you know, right? You ask a question, you don't know where it's going to go. And so if it's really important or you see something where clearly I've misunderstood something, like clarify it. So they're taking notes. This debrief is in a spreadsheet that I've set up so that their key things that we wanted to learn. And so those are specified in that spreadsheet for each study that I'm doing. Like these were the key things.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then there's also a Slack channel, usually in the background, because there's leather chatter like, wait, what did they say? They're talking about this. They mentioned that product. Has anybody heard of that? So that's really important kind of going in the background. Vanessa or Kate also monitors that. So it's a that's the way that somebody can pass me notes to ask specific other questions. I can't do the interview and track the notes and like my brain doesn't can't handle that. So they're in there and then I have a chat window open just with Kate or Vanessa. And so they'll pop me questions as they come up. We usually ask teams to be pretty judicious about that because”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they're all live streaming it. They're taking notes. They're in a Google Doc or Notion or Doc or whatever you want, collaboratively doing that. And so people are assigned roles. So take turns taking notes because it's pretty intense. We have people manually taking notes and not using AI to take notes. The reason for this is what we found is we want people to lean in to this experience. We want you to focus and engage and pay a lot of attention. And if you know somebody else is taking notes, it tends to maybe make you lean out a little bit or maybe you check your Slack or you're looking at email or something. And so it's about keeping you really engaged and working. So it's a working watch party. So we take turns. We've assigned roles so people know okay, interview two Lenny and Margolis are going to be taking notes, that's fine”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is awesome. So, this is like our. Like our magic hack for banging all this stuff together, right? So everything is coming together in this watch party. So in this watch party, we have, again, I'm conducting an interview. I'm off on Zoom, one-on-one conducting these interviews. In the watch party, Vanessa, Kateronowitz, my amazing design partners, often are facilitating the group there. And so what they're having the team do is take notes and go through these debrief sessions in between each interview. And so we have a very particular way that we structure all of that. And it's very important that the team is all in there and watching and doing this together. So I'm in Zoom. I have it set up so it's live streaming to them so they're not in my zoom. It's not like 20 of us with a bunch of heads watching the person, right? It's really important to me. That's just me and the customer that I'm talking to directly.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You might maybe that's just me, but you might develop kind of that other character, especially if you're a founder used to pitching, you can have your listener character.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Practice makes a difference. It's a hard skill. It seems like, oh, everybody talks to everybody, but it's different. When I do these, and I've done, I've interviewed thousands of people at this point. I have a different character mode that I put my head in, and so I literally, before I start an interview, I stop, I take a deep breath, and I kind of put on that smile and I put on my listener character where I am embodying these things, this extreme curiosity, this focus on the person, this engagement, which is quite different from my normal kind of more cynical skeptical. Personality to the point where if my kids have overheard who is that dude because that does not sound like dad whoever is talking to that person But it's a different mode in my head where I'm in interviewer mode. And so”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And to be really genuinely curious, like I think that's really Again, it's to this mindset, this difference between selling. I have to genuinely want to understand and see the world and my product through their eyes. You're going to hear stuff that is wrong you know doesn't make sense or you're like that's weird what is that and you just have to not dismiss that but dig in and try to understand like why why do you think that and what gives you that impression that's what you're trying to learn right and just smile genuine curiosity and focus on that person in front of you is will get you pretty far”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I'm building this arc slowly, hopefully not too slowly, to get them talking. So one of the most important things is when you're doing that interview, Smile, you have to start with the big smile, even if you're on the phone, it totally changes the way your voice sounds. And what I'm often looking for in those first few minutes is, are they smiling back? Can I get the person to smile back at me? And then like, okay, we're good. Like I'm getting them responsive and getting them talking.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the way that I think about it is that I'm building an arc in that conversation. And so it starts, like you said, it's just chit chat about the weather and where you are and whatever. Like, do I care what the weather? Like, I don't care what the weather is like. But what I'm trying to do is build some rapport fast with somebody. Again, it gets back to this idea of humble inquiry where I'm trying to build a connection with the person. I'm trying to make them feel comfortable because they usually are showing up. They're like, they want to make you happy, but they don't really understand like it's awkward. It's super weird. Like, there's this, I'm going to talk to this weird dude. He's paying me to tell him what turns out to be a bunch of personal stuff. And we're never going to talk again. But like, am I doing a good job? Like, it's odd. And so I'm trying to put them at ease and I'm trying to encourage them and make it clear the expert in this situation, but they don't really know what's going to happen.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And through the arc of that conversation, by doing the first half where I've had the discovery conversation, it gives me a huge amount of context to understand their feedback about the prototypes. Because there will be times when they'll say things or tell us something. And because we heard they'll tell us something about the prototype. And because of what we heard in the first part, we'll understand why. Like, oh, it's because they had that other experience in the past where that thing went totally haywire when something like that happened and they don't have trust in that. And now I know why that's the situation. And it's very, very, very common that when teams are watching this, they're always like, for Christ's sake, Margos, would you just like get to the prototypes? Like, why are you just talking to them about all this other stuff? And you're just like chit-chatting with them like, ugh, show them prototypes. And so we always have to remind people, like, no, this is really important. Partly you're also just learning a lot. You hear those stories, which is what you want to get, but it provides a lot of context for understanding their reaction to the prototypes.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I'm having them compare and contrast. So by having three different prototypes, it's enough for them to then sort of step back and not pick a winner, but be able to say like, oh, I like this aspect of this one. I like the fact that this one's being delivered by a pharmacist, but I really prefer that this other one is a 15 minute window, for example. And so they're kind of teasing out what are the best pieces of each of these. And that's really what I'm looking for through the course of this conversation is I want to like grab the best bits and pieces, the best LEGO pieces so I can then go construct the ideal version next, right? Because none of these, again, I'm not going to build probably any one of those. I'm looking for the best pieces.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the comparing and contrasting is I'm presenting each prototype and people are kind of responding to that and like telling me what they see, what this is. And then the responding to what each of these prototypes says, what they like, what they don't like, what's important, what's not important, some parts that they don't comment on is fine, like if that just doesn't even register, that's good to know.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're scheduled, so people are showing up on Thursday. We're going to start doing interviews. So you have to draft your interview guide. And so what these interviews are going to look like in the course of that watch party, it's five one-hour interviews. Each interview is a two-part interview. So the first part of the interview is this discovery interview, where I'm asking people about their existing and past experiences and attitudes and opinions about whatever this part of their life is. How did you previously get your medications delivered? What worked, what didn't work, tell me about a time when it totally went sideways. Tell me about a time it worked perfectly. So we go through that and have that about halfway through that interview, I shift to comparing and contrasting these prototypes.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Proofread it carefully. People get stuck on errors, and then it undermines the validity and the credibility of the prototype. So proofread it and make sure, because otherwise people are like, oh, that's not right.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I designed them enough that they look different. Each other, so it's not version A, version B, version C, because in the course of the conversation with all the observers, I want it to be clear which prototype somebody is talking about. The green one versus the blue one versus the red one. So then, when the observers can keep track, otherwise, you're like, wait, which one are they talking about? I don't know what's happening”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Awesome means very crisply describing the distinct value proposition and problem you're solving in a way that people get it. They're like, oh, I understand what this one is. And then I can compare it to these other ones. And I understand what the features are and I can have that conversation. It's about the value prop. It's about making sure that they understand what it is. It's not this kind of marketing speak where you're like, wait, what? You just have to be super blunt. This is kind of what it is and why this is awesome and why this one is awesome and then they're shopping.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, they may. I think the thing that's important is to not get distracted by that. So here there is the benefit to keeping it simple is that you're not too wed and too committed to anything. So build only as much as you actually need to answer the question you're trying to answer.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Weight, this kind of thing. So we're developing this range and then creating these prototypes that are very simple. They're just PDFs, really, very flat. There's no functionality. A lot of it is really a writing exercise to articulate what's the distinct value prop and what's the brand promise and the problem you're solving for each of these prototypes. So you want to make it look as real as possible. So it looks like a homepage for the product. So it's the box around this thing. So you don't have to build anything. You're just describing it and putting whatever you need to illustrate and convey that. But they need to stand alone. I'm not going to pitch them or narrate to them and just create those so that I can present those three distinct recipes.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, what we do is work out the details of the variables that we're going to spread across these prototypes. So there are certain features and then certain variables that I kind of imagine spread across these different things. For example, we were talking about delivery of specialty medications. So imagine one of the attributes is who's delivering it. So maybe one version is a pharmacist is going to come, one is just a delivery courier guy, and then another one, in this case actually, it was a drone company. So a drone is dropping this thing off. And so we could talk more about what it was like to test that, but there are different variables here. The other option is, say, the size of the window of the delivery window, right? So it'll come in two days, but you can narrow down in a 15 minute window. This one is like as soon as possible. You just have to be home.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So then the next step is to figure out your prototypes. And so, what I want to do with those is I want to create, again, these three distinct examples, three distinct recipes of the possible features and distinct variables that we want to present in these interviews. And so, as I said before, ideally, I can find competitors' products and use those as free prototypes. I love doing that. It's surprising to me that often people don't do more of this. And I think that there's sometimes a sense that it's cheating or they're worried they're going to copy it or something. I'm like, whatever. If you haven't studied your competitor's product and not just gone through it, but like seen how people respond to them, you're just missing something, right?”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually don't. So user interviews by working with them and by doing some of these other things along the way where I'm Making sure people are kind of responding to me during the course of the week leading up to it. Did you sign my NDA? Like I send a reminder, are you responding? Like I can tell if they're engaged. If I'm getting, if somebody's essentially ghosting me and I'm getting nothing, I'll just swap them out. But I don't use alternates and I have very, very high follow through.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also, and it also has just seemed to work. People are showing up for that. So if people weren't, then I would adjust.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To make sure they show up, make sure you're compensating them sufficiently. This is something where I'm not giving $20 Starbucks cards because somebody's going to blow you off. Like when I have those five sessions and the whole team queued up to watch, I want people to show up. So I'm making sure I'm reminding people. I'm making sure that they're kind of responsive to me when I'm asking them to e-sign an NDA ahead of time. Like am I hearing back from them? And I'm paying for most like typical kind of consumer things, like $125 an hour for them to show up and do this. It's worth spending the money. If I recently did something where I was talking to attorneys, I was paying their hourly rate. I was paying like $400 an hour for them to show up, but I need them to show up.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because you don't want to be vulnerable and express that you don't know. And people are always, I come across the very nervous about that. So there's something that's very distinct here about learning mode versus a selling mode, selling and telling versus kind of this idea of humble inquiry. So I think that's actually an important distinction here.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're very good at, and they're very used to, and they're required to just sell all the time, and they're pitching their VCs, they're pitching their customers. That's very different from learning and being in humble inquiry, you basically have to be vulnerable. And I can always do it because I'm not the founder and I don't know. I always present myself as like, I don't know the space and I'm an idiot. And like, can you explain it to me? But asking questions and being vulnerable and giving. Person you're asking the higher status is a difficult thing to do as a founder when you're selling.”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I hear a lot is people are like, I'm on customer calls, we're selling all the time. And obviously, you can learn a ton from selling and pitching and meeting with companies and potential people who seem like maybe they are customers. But that mode is very, very different from what I'm describing, which is to learn, to kind of run these experiments as fast as you can. And there's something, just even a mindset and how you approach the conversations that's fundamentally different. There's this term that I love that Ed Schein coined, which is humble inquiry. And so it's, he frames it as humble inquiry is the gentle art of asking instead of telling. And so to me, that's like this fundamental way that I think about even just conducting these interviews. So if you're in a selling mode, and I encountered this over and over with heads of product and founders, is that if they're very...”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think this actually touches on another important point, which is that this is a learning exercise. So that's what I'm describing is how do we learn more faster. And this is different from selling. So”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's fine. Like, I don't know internally how they actually describe the details of it, but Some of those you want very concrete, measurable things to be able to tease apart, like, well, our founder-led art, like, you know, like, how are you behaving? What other products are you using in your stack that this fits or doesn't fit these kinds of things?”
2024-12-01 · Lenny's Podcast · Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source