Pragmatic Venture Blueprint
Card 6 of 18
Clarify your customer
Category
Demand Validation (2-3)
Author
Jeremy Vo
How do I know if there’s a good fit with a customer segment?
Run a segment analysis to better break down hypothesis yes vs hypothesis no. Look for patterns amongst them. With enough data you should be able to tap into some patterns and see emerging trends.
You can use any tools you see fit. The best way we’ve done it is to list all the companies/contacts you spoke to during your discovery phase and then list out attributes you think would be interesting to compare amongst one another.
The good thing is that a lot of this info will be directly from the interview guide such as the segment details, what challenges they face, facts about their existing workflow, etc.
From your tracker, you will already likely have a sense of what patterns are coming through, even based on Hypothesis Y/N.
Finding patterns in prospects:
Compare customers against one another → see patterns emerge
Identify a sub-segment that is the best fit (based on the knowledge at hand)
As you can see with this example, we’ve separated Hypothesis No (invalidaed) vs the Yes (validated, which all have a higher pain score than the No’s)
We can clearly start to see that the title of the contact and the industries that they sold into were clear points
The other one is that the combination of 2 problems at the same time were enough for them to believe it was a problem worth solving vs just only 1 of them … in this case it was multiple problems adding up causing “believes the problem should be solved”
How do I tell the story of my customer?
Given that we’ve spoken these customers and ran a discovery process, you now have incredible ammunition because you have the exact quotes of the customer from call recordings. More importantly, you have the keywords and vernacular in which they speak to articulate the validation criteria for your hypothesis statement.
We like to build out a Persona chart based on these quotes to really highlight the pain point that these prospects are feeling. You are not making any of this stuff up. As such, it helps to convey the message to your team, new employees that you’re hiring, as well as investors.
Telling the story:
Showcase facts collected
Use top articulations and quotes to tell the story verbatim (gives proof)
Additional resources
Case Study: How 50 Customer Interviews Transformed a Startup
