Wrong Questions → Wrong Answers
To determine feasibility, you have to interview a lot of people. Interviewing, in fact, will take most of your time as you learn about how customers think and what they’d be willing to pay for. The questions you ask in these interviews will inform your entire strategy, making the ability to ask questions one of the most important skills of an early-stage entrepreneur.
The biggest mistake founders make when interviewing is that they ask leading questions, that is, questions that prompt your audience to respond in a certain way. When exploring revenue model, for example, a leading question might be, “Would you rather pay one time up front, or a monthly subscription?” The structure of this question forces the respondent to choose one or the other when it’s possible that they wouldn’t pay anything. Leading questions can constrain your interviewees and bias their responses.
Instead, ask open-ended, unbiased question like, “Is this something that you would pay for?” Try your best to ask open-ended, unbiased questions that result in actionable insights. If you ask the wrong questions, you’ll get the wrong answers.
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