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

  1. “Was interesting to me about those I would go even deeper and more specific because some of those things like, I mean, and”

    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

  2. “Oncologists are not on user interviews. They don't care about my 125. Like they're busy doing something more important. And so if I'm doing that, I need to find a different way to approach that. So then I'm thinking about where do these people kind of cluster online or in person that I might be able to target them? There are certain forums or certain conferences, these kinds of things. Or I'm doing snowball recruiting. If you're building a product for oncologists, hopefully probably have some context with oncologists and you can kind of have work through their network, have find one person, they can recommend another person. You still want to filter them and make sure that they are matching your core criteria. It requires different kinds of techniques to find those kinds of folks, professional associations.”

    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

  3. “The caveat there is there are times when Need to talk to somebody who's just very hard to find or hard. They're not going to be on user interviews. So, like, I've done a lot of work in the past with oncologists, with flat iron health.”

    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

  4. “Can be hundreds sometimes if I'm looking like I did one recently, I was looking for a very particular group of AI engineers that did not get 400 responses. That was a very hard one to find. That was an example where there was this very particular group that we were looking for. And I was like, do these exist, like this thing that you're solving for? I don't know. This is pretty hard to find these people. I'm not sure they're existing.”

    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

  5. “So it will depend on what I post and how much response I get. So there are times, it has been somewhat hard for me to predict. There are times I do it and I'll just, they just, the responses just start rolling in. So the times I get like 400 responses basically download it into a spreadsheet and just start sifting through as a reference I have my criteria and then I'm just trying to find who matches who doesn't.”

    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

  6. “So it's not like No, I mean in previous days, I used to use Craigslist and I did a lot of some pretty crazy shit recruiting people through Craigslist. I had people once meeting me at a hotel room to test a robot and through Craigslist. But no, user interviews is much more legit and very fast. And there are other services like this now. But it's been one of the big changes that speeds a lot of this stuff 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

  7. “And typically, what I do is I rely pretty heavily actually on user interviews. Respondent is another one of these kind of services. So I can post that questionnaire and get responses depending on what I'm looking for. Fast, so I can recruit in a matter of three, four days typically, depending on what I'm looking for. And I've been able to get Surprisingly specific people that way. And so that is a huge shortcut for me to be able to recruit that way.”

    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

  8. “Everybody does. But if I can ask the question in a different way in terms of what are some of the podcasts you listen to, what are the kinds of people you follow, these kinds of things, and then see where does that show up or even ask it as an open-ended question, right? Like where do you get your most trusted information as a product manager and start to see and then be able to pick those people out? Because what I've wanted to do, one of the key things in those bullseye criteria are that they're very concrete and very measurable things. It's not just, oh, this person is an active shopper. Like that's not very helpful to me because I need to translate it into this questionnaire. So I need to know, what is active shopper? That means somebody who is purchasing certain kind of item, whatever we define three times a week. Like, yeah, that's active, right? So we have some very particular, very measurable, concrete things. And so then I'm writing this questionnaire.”

    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

  9. “So once I have that set of criteria and the team is all aligned and agreed on what that is, like, yeah, yeah, those are our people. So then I start thinking about how do I recruit them. So to do that, for most people, unless I'm looking for something that's very, very specialized or hard to find, what I do is I create a screener questionnaire. So I translate these criteria into essentially a set of questions that will help me filter out people to know if people respond to this questionnaire, who are the bullseyes in there. And so part of the trick there is to write a questionnaire in a way that I'm not telegraphing the right answers and so that I kind of am in the control seat so I can pick out and identify the people. So what I mean by that is if I were to say I will pay $125 to anybody who is a product manager who listens to Lenny's podcast and all of a sudden I'm going to get a bazillion people who is like, I will take that $125. I'm like, well, I don't know. Do you actually listen to the podcast? Like, I don't know. Hopefully you do.”

    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

  10. “Yeah, is there something about it? It was for them, it was this really interesting, again, kind of way to start thinking about distinguishing characters like, oh, yeah, what is a valuable customer to us? Like they're at an early stage and they were attracting a lot of people in different kinds of personas and they're trying to figure out what's the pattern here. Like who matters more to you or not?”

    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

  11. “Yeah, so I was having this conversation yesterday with a company I met with them. And so, what I asked them was, What makes one customer or another more valuable to you?”

    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

  12. “So, the idea was that people who were in this particular demographic in this time of life, they would be building buying life insurance. And what we found was everybody was saying, like, well, we should buy life insurance. Yeah, it's one of those things like I should take care of that. Yeah, I should take care of that. Oh, yeah, I really need to get life insurance. But people who had the trigger was oh, you just had a baby, or you just got married. And now people like, oh, this is actually on my to-do list. Like I need to go get this done. And so I'm in a completely different mindset. That's the person who now is your bullseye. It's an example of a trigger that somebody's like, oh, like now I need to go do this thing”

    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

  13. “Specific events or situations that somebody's been in that makes them particularly ready or ripe for the solution. So sometimes the way that looks, sometimes the examples of that can be you're selling a new cybersecurity platform for something and there's a new CSO has come in. There's a new sheriff in town and they're looking to revamp things and rethink. And so it's a time when somebody's open to considering new options. Or something's gone wrong, right? Somebody's in a situation where something's gone sideways and they need a new solution for that kind of thing. Or we were working for an insurance tech company and they were targeting millennials.”

    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

  14. “Not yet. And that could be things that we talked about was maybe they have too much expert knowledge here. They're not really a typical person. That's not who I want to talk to. Maybe they're using a competitive product and they're already locked into that. I don't need to talk to them. Or they've had some other personal past experience that's going to just make them not a good candidate. Like I'm working on FinTech and this person is in bankruptcy or has had identity stolen. I want to help them, but that's not like our first place to start. So, these exclusion criteria are critical. And then these triggers are”

    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

  15. “It probably gets down to, yeah, it's more like seven. I mean, that's, you know, roughly, it depends The way I think about it is kind of in these three groups. So there are inclusion criteria, there are exclusion criteria, and then there are what we found very important are triggers. So by inclusion criteria, this is usually pretty easy because a team is like, yeah, these are the people we want in the group, right? It's people who are taking specialty medications for these particular conditions. We can build that out. The exclusion criteria I find is a place to dwell and help a company really think that through a bit more to brainstorm that because as we talked about, it's harder for teams to set people aside, right? And so it's thinking about like, what are reasons why somebody maybe is not the best customer 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

  16. “In the same way, we define this bullseye. And then when I go recruit and try to find them, if I can't find them. I usually take that as a sign of something, also. Like, I don't know if these people exist. And it could be sometimes. But if, in fact, I just can't find these people, these people that you're imagining exist who want this thing. I'm not sure how you're going to sell to them. Not that I'm like the final arbiter of whether these people exist, but. Something you should go check.”

    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

  17. “Totally. And as a researcher and as a VC, like if I can save a company and a founder and a product team from going down some path or too far down a path. That's huge for everybody, right? They have so much energy to do. Go do the other thing.”

    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

  18. “It's not that, and it was by doing this, and you see it enough times, and he felt like that was one of the most valuable outcomes for him. It's like, now I know what no looks like.”

    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

  19. “We had mocked up a bunch of prototypes, and I'd use some free prototypes when we interviewed, like, it killed the project. That was super valuable to him. He saved a huge amount of time and effort. The other thing that he's mentioned to me was that through going through the process, he learned what No looked like. So he could see. Oh, like I'm getting kind of this neutral, positive, encouraging feedback. And as we did this, he realized like, oh, that's, they don't. They don't want 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

  20. “We had done a project a while ago and actually killed the project. So through going through bullseye customer sprint with something that he was doing, we did three rounds of it. And finally, he was like, yeah, this is not, I'm going to focus on the other part of my business. And he said, we killed the project. And what he told me was two things that were really interesting to me. One was this saved me a huge amount of pain. We ran through this. Like, we had to do some work to the bullseye customer sprint, but the product that he was going to build, it was hardware, it was software, it was this whole subscription, like it was going to be a big, complicated thing to build.”

    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

  21. “I avoid the phrase product market fit with this stuff, and we can talk about that because I think that's kind of interesting. When you find this match, what happens in the qualitative interviews is that you can sense the energy and the excitement and the enthusiasm it comes across, especially as you do a bunch of these, you can tell there's a difference. And so that's what you're looking for is people who are then starting like, wait, is this available? Is this a thing? Can I sign up for this? Like it's that kind of thing, or they're really leaning into it. And you can just qualitatively can just see it. One of the things I thought was very interesting was I was recently speaking to a founder whom I'm doing another round of this with a new set of concepts.”

    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

  22. “That seems like a much higher value problem that we're solving here. And so we ended up running this again. So I re-recruited with people who had that subset of kinds of medications and issues and also were dissatisfied with the status quo of their existing service and were not available to just kind of be around. So they were busy and whatever and they needed this window. And so we ran it again. We were like, oh, yeah, there it is, right? So that second group of people, you just start building this confidence in the match between what you're building, what the problem is you're solving, and who exactly you're building it for. And in that case, you could see, oh, yeah, that is the right bullseye. That's why there's this very narrow specific group who's much more likely to adopt this than like everybody who has specialty medications because the need is just much more acute.”

    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

  23. “But knowing when it was arriving, and it turned out that the scenarios where that was critical was things like it's a refrigerated medication. This can't be sitting out on my stoop, right? It's cold chain. Or there's for some reason an issue where I'm especially worried about theft or something, like because of what the medication is or where I'm living or weather. So there are these very particular scenarios. Then going back to this idea of the bullseye customer, you realize, oh, wait, so it's a subset. Customers who have like refrigerated meds like”

    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

  24. “Ranges things from it can be delivered in an hour or you know, or it can be delivered over a four hour window or it can be delivered. It'll take, you know, we'll get it there as soon as we can get it there, but we're not quite sure when it'll become. You just have to be home and available, right? These kinds of things. So went through this exercise. And what rose to the surface as we were doing these is that there were certain customers for whom this was a much, much bigger issue, for whom they needed to be there and know when this thing was showing up. So it turned out having that distinct window, a narrow window of when a predictable narrow window of when this was going to arrive was much more important than ASAP. These are important medications. They're not waiting until like the last pill is gone. Like that's not what's happening 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

  25. “Is I don't want somebody who knows too much. So your core bullseye customer, I want somebody who's pretty typical. So in this case, like if I were to find out that somebody was a pharmacist or worked in healthcare, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's probably not like a typical customer if I just have these five precious interview slots. I probably don't want that. So I'm going to exclude those people. So we went through and did this and then generated these different prototypes to express kind of a range of different recipes of value props of what this might be, 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

  26. “So, a good example there is have you had other things delivered? Food? Have you had gone through this kind of process before where you've used Uber eats? Because if you have never had anything delivered like that before, that's going to be too many humps to get over to get the person to accept their medications coming by delivery. So they've probably used Uber Eats or something like that. And they've been on the medication for a certain amount of time. So it's somebody who this is kind of a chronic thing. It's not like a one-off acute situation. They needed to find people who had a certain kind of density. So how rural were they living? How urban was it because of the way they were going to do the deliveries? Somebody who was responsible for their own medication. So we don't want somebody who's in some kind of a healthcare setting where somebody else is taking care of it or maybe their spouse or partner is kind of managing their prescriptions. So these are the kinds of things that we're starting to look for. Another typical exclusion criteria.”

    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

  27. “Want to know what's really the fundamental issue or problem that we're solving here? And so they wanted to answer those questions. And so we go through this process. And so those are the key questions. And then the customers that they're after, I know like, okay, well, it's not going to be everybody with specialty medications. And so as we start teasing through that and thinking about it, I want to think about what are examples of other products that somebody has used that would”

    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

  28. “Me, just give you an example. I think a lot of the stuff we're talking about starts to get a little abstract. So I was working with a company that was developing a new delivery service for people who have specialty prescriptions medications. So these are the kinds of medications that are expensive and for very specialized chronic diseases. So this is not the kind of thing you're getting at RiteAid. And so And there's something kind of very special about this company, and I can mention that afterwards. But the fundamental thing for them to figure out was before they can build out the logistics of this, they're trying to figure out like, do we need to target something that is for delivery, like ASAP, right? These are really important medications for very serious diseases. Is it like, oh my gosh, I need the next pill? Like, get it to me as fast as you can? Or is it like, well, I can wait till a day or two, but I need it between like 2 and 215 p.m. if I knew that. And then who exactly is this bullseye customer?”

    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

  29. “The goal is to figure out was this right or not, or in what ways do we need to adjust? Like that's a big piece of the outcome is adjusting that definition of your bullseye customer. And often what happens is through the course of that bullseye customer sprint, you learn, oh, it turns out like there's actually this other distinguishing characteristic we didn't realize or maybe it validates what we knew, but often we didn't quite realize that like this other thing is popping up where we're seeing heat from people. Oh, well, that's interesting. Let's dive in a little more. I mean, I can walk through an example if you want. Yeah.”

    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

  30. “And most often what happens is we do this, we define it our best, right? It's our hypothesis. It's our best guess. The team is always very expert. I'm not, right? I'm always showing up as the noob in whatever this business is. And so the team is expert. And so this is very informed. It's not like we're guessing. But we go through this, and by the time after we've done these interviews,”

    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

  31. “And they're people, so there's still some variation, but it's a way for us to test that, right? And if there's too much variation, then what happens at the end of the day, you're like, that was kind of a mush. Like, I don't, I'm not really sure what we learned. Was it because... It was just people had mixed feelings, or was it because there was just not enough consistency? Like, we had too many variables there. Like, I don't know what we learned 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

  32. “I love that. Yeah, I hadn't heard that phrase, but I love that. Yeah. Comically narrow is exactly what it is. And there are times that teams will just be like, oh, for God's sakes, Margolis, like just like this is too much. The reason that I do that is I'm pushing them to identify a person who they all would agree this person, if we present this value prop that we think we're going to build and this problem we think we're solving, we are all convinced or it's our best guess like it's fine if you're not sure. But we're pretty convinced that that's the person who will say yeah I mean like I need this thing and so it's a way I'm kind of running an experiment, right? So it's a way to reduce variables for me and then to get that specific and then I recruit a bunch of the people who match that very particular characteristic set of characteristics”

    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

  33. “Customer that we've been talking about. And the reason this is, I love doing this as a team is that what happens invariably is having that conversation before we've even gotten to any interviews is super clarifying for a team because they tend to get a shorthand about who their customers are. And this is a way, and I just keep asking questions, like, well, what do you mean by that, right? So when you say you're building a delivery service for people who get specialty medications delivered, especially prescription medications, like who exactly is that, right? It's not everybody. Like, and so we start narrowing down. So they start having those conversations, debates, arguments about who it is and just having that is really clarifying for the team. Like, oh, well, I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, I guess it's true. Maybe it's not everybody who has that. It's only people who have this kind of condition or this set of conditions.”

    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

  34. “So, step two is based on what you want to learn. Now, let's figure out who is the bullseye customer that we need to talk to to answer that question. And it all starts with those key questions that you have, because if the question is about, let's say, big questions about onboarding, well, if the questions are about onboarding flow, then you're going to want to talk to new customers, right? Somebody who's fresh to this to see how do they get through or how do they understand what this is. Whereas if you're talking about something that's a new feature that's already in your product, then you'd be talking to existing customers. So that's an example where if I understand what the questions are, I can kind of work backwards to understand who do I need to talk to. And then based on that, what I do is run what I call a bullseye exercise. So it's again essentially another kind of interview. Get the team together and I peppered them with a lot of questions to figure out like exactly who is this bullseye.”

    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

  35. “Kind of your hypotheses and what are your assumptions about the product, about the customer? You know, who do you think this is or not and why? Kind of what are those nagging debates on the team, those kinds of things that keep coming up over and over, like, oh, for God's sakes, let's go get some information and answer the question, right? So with some of these things. So we have that initial meeting to kind of detail like what do we need 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

  36. “So step one is what I do I plan about a 45 minute meeting with the team. So again, it's really important to have that core team together and have this conversation about what are the key questions. Basically, what do you wish you would know about your product, about your customers? What's getting in the way? One of the most common ways that we ask this is basically what keeps you up at night because founders and product people have, there's a bazillion things that they're kind of bubbling in their head that they're worrying about, but that often gets them to kind of step back and be like, oh, what I'm really unsure is this, right? What's going to happen? How will people respond to this fundamental concept or this idea? Or how will they use it, right? And so that's kind of the, I have a set of questions that I'll go through with them to help prompt and elicit what are those big things that you wish you knew, right? What would have to be true for this to succeed, 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

  37. “What's going on? We clearly this is we have some traction maybe, but it's not what we wanted, or we're getting that kind of very polite, encouraging feedback, which is kind of sounds good, but it's really no. Let's go dive in and find out. So those are kind of the big key things of the times of when to do 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

  38. “You can do it many times. The key times to do it is at a high level, it's before hopefully you've invested a lot of time into building something, a lot of energy and the team's energy and money that goes into the building. So it's usually before you build something, maybe if you're expanding into a new group of customers, so you are killing it in the UK and now you're trying to get into the US market. And that's different. Are you worry it's different or you're not sure? It's a good time to check. Or maybe you were selling to enterprise. You're doing very like white glove, high touch sales to enterprise. And now you're going to shift down to maybe a different tier of customers and you're trying to set up some more of a self-serve kind of a sales motion. You need to understand that. Another common time is when you're selling, but it's like not something's not going quite as well as maybe you hoped it was going. You've already launched and you want to just kind of troubleshoot.”

    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

  39. “But the magic of all watching it and processing it and discussing it and debating it through the course of the day is that everybody is aligned. We've all seen it. I don't write a report. I haven't written a report in, I don't know, 10 years because we've at the end when we capture those big takeaways, the team has captured it, right? We end up, we do it through Google Form. It shows up in the spreadsheet and we kind of discuss it. And then everybody's just like raring to go do the next thing. And everybody's aligned and there's this incredible amount of momentum from the team after that. And they're like, let's go do the next thing. Like it's clear what we need to do and what we learned. And sometimes the next thing is do this again and adjust so we can build more confidence. But make it a team sport has been this very powerful tool for building consensus, building alignment, especially as teams are growing and people are going to start up running in different directions. It's like a chance to come together and make sure like, where are we? What are we doing?”

    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

  40. “And you can be a little bit more neutral and a little bit more objective if you're not all so bought into one thing. So comparing prototypes becomes very powerful. And then the other thing is making this a team sport. So the watch parties are a key example of this. So I'm conducting these interviews and the whole team is, and I'm live streaming it. So the whole team is all watching it. These days, typically people are pretty distributed. So I'm doing it over Zoom and they're watching the live stream independently. And then one of my partners, so Kate Aranowitz or Vanessa Cho. amazing design partners I get to work with are often facilitating kind of that back room And so what they're doing is they're helping the team. We have a structured process for taking notes and then in between each interview they're debriefing so I have kind of this spreadsheet that I use with like these are the key things we wanted to get out of this and so they're they're going through and just capturing that like what just happened in this interview like let's make sure we have the high level and at the end of the day we have a way to kind of all capture like what were our big takeaways what happened”

    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

  41. “Reference points. And when you're testing with customers, it's not up to them to come up with these different possibilities of what could be. And so if I'm presenting those, you're like, oh, that's interesting. So I like the way this one has cushions that are made out of down, but this other one is really interesting because they deliver it. Oh, but this, I like this because it's a style that I like and they actually take away my old couch, right? So then I can like compare and contrast across these different possibilities, these different distinct value propositions. And I'm not looking for a winner, but this comparison. The other big benefit of having multiple prototypes is it helps teams avoid getting too wed to one specific idea. And so you can get a little overcommitted. There's a risk that you get overcommitted to one idea. You're polishing that. You're working on it. You're too committed to that. And this pushes teams to think of new different possibilities.”

    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

  42. “And then we compare prototypes. And so this kind of comes from that time I had at Walmart where I sort of see the whole world as a shopping process. And so there's something very valuable, just the way any of you have shopped for anything, right? You don't look at just one thing. If I showed you just one thing, you'd have some feedback and you'd have an opinion about it. Like, let's shop for a couch. I like the color. The cushions are uncomfortable. I like them fabric or not. And that's helpful and that's interesting to hear. As you start looking at two or three, then you start having this different...”

    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

  43. “Kind of the common version of this is everybody after four or five is like, oh, for God's sakes, please don't let me sit through any more of these. Like, I get it. I'm hearing the same things over and over. Like, I understand. Let's move on and do something different. Change the customer, change the prototypes, whatever. So qualitative interviews in small clumps.”

    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

  44. “You do them in a clump like that, then the patterns are just much more obvious. At the end of the day, it's just really clear what were the big takeaways. It's not going to answer every question that you ever had about your product or your customers, but the big things that you set out to answer, it's pretty clear. Like, did it work? Did it not work? Which parts were good or bad? All these kinds of things. And the whole team has watched it. And so they have that sense. And that idea of just doing five of them, you hit what's called data saturation. And so this is a thing in qualitative research where”

    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

  45. “But then we do those in small batches. So rather than do an interview on Monday and then one on Wednesday and then a couple on Friday, we clump them. So ideally it's in that one day. So I bang out five interviews one hour interviews in one day while the whole team's watching. Sometimes we do it across two days, depending on time zones and things like that. But the idea is that they're clumped together. And the reason for that is.”

    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

  46. “There are lots and lots of different kinds of research methods, but what I've found over doing this for many years is that the biggest bang for your buck is doing these kind of deep qualitative interviews where I can dig in and understand people's stories, understand their motivations, understand past experiences. Why did you do this in the past? What have you done in the past? What's worked? What hasn't worked? And having the whole team watch that and understand and build that kind of empathy and understanding and hear those stories is very powerful.”

    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

  47. “So, one is a bullseye customer. So, we talked about that, right? So, again, bullseye customer is that very specific subset of your target market who's initially most likely to adopt your product or service. So we want to recruit that group of people. And one of the reasons that we do that is if the whole team is in agreement, I have five people who match that and everybody's like, yeah, yeah, those people, those are the ones that if they saw this, we're pretty sure like they'd be into this. They'd want this. Like we're all, we agree. And so that way after we do the interviews, depending on what the feedback is, they can't really dismiss it. Like, well, we all thought that. And it's fine if it didn't, if they didn't want it or they reacted in certain ways. That's what we wanted to learn. But upfront, we were able to like identify and say, yes, yes, those really we think are the right people. That's our hypothesis. So first is five bullseye customers. The next part is about qualitative interviews.”

    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

  48. “So the basic formula, the way I think about it is five and three and one. So it's five bullseye customers and three very simple prototypes. And then we conduct those interviews in one day while the whole team is watching and debriefing and kind of thinking about what are the key big takeaways at the end of that. And so that's all as a team.”

    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

  49. “Having them focus on the bullseye customer is a way to help them focus and prioritize what they're thinking about building, what the questions are that they're asking, and who it is that they need to target and build for. And so all of those things, once we can help them narrow that down and decide who are we really focused on and who are we setting aside until later, it helps them prioritize their roadmap. It helps them prioritize the feedback that they're getting and gets a whole team aligned and moving together much faster.”

    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

  50. “Be very specific about who you are going to start with, who is that very distinct group that is most likely initially to adopt helps streamline a huge number of things. So it helps you prioritize what are you building. It helps you get really deep in understanding who are those people and understanding what they need. It helps you prioritize the feedback you're getting. You're often getting just a ton of input from investors, from friends and family if you're talking to them, from lots of people who kind of seem like they're in your target market, but it helps you kind of winnow away some of that stuff and be like, which parts of this are important? We'll get to you. It's not that we're not going to eventually serve you. But initially, here's where we're going to focus. And it just gets everybody as a team much more aligned on what are we doing and what are we doing first.”

    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