Discover your customers with No-Code
What is customer discovery?
Customer discovery (and development) is the process of validating your assumptions and identifying the right customers for your business. It helps immensely before you start building. But it should also never stop.
The term customer discovery was coined by the famous (at least in Startup-Land) Steve Blank, and along with the Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick, is a large part of the reason for why my customer research company exists.
You see, there’s this terrifying statistic that nine out of ten startups fail.
And the biggest reason for that failure is simply because people make things that nobody wants. What’s wonderful about this static though, is that the ‘failure’ not due to lack of talent, resources or intelligence.
You could argue that by pointing founders and businesses in the right direction – or by eliminating the wrong directions – you could find success and provide value to your customers.
In this article, I’ll be talking about the why. And if you’ve been reading our work, you’ll know that they why is really important. After you’ve read this you should check out the how from our friends at Hello Meets.
Risk (Not the board game)
Now, building a business at any time is risky. It was risky in the 1900s, the 1980s, and will be just as risky in the future. Just look at every science fiction movie set after the year 1997.
There are infinite ways to create a business and none are inherently wrong. You could:
Go with your gut and build something that you think the market needs
Create something based on your lived experiences
Spot an opportunity in a field you don’t know and try to capitalize on it
Copy an existing product and sell it to a different customer type
Research a customer type and then build something they want or need
Build a community and sell to them
There are tens or hundreds of thousands of sustainable businesses that have generated meaningful value for each of these points above. It’s just that some of them are riskier than others. Your success depends on mitigating these risks, getting lucky, or in reality – both.
And depending on your situation and appetite for risk, some of these options may not be available to you. My advice is not to dwell on that and focus on what you can control.
Your first 100
So let’s assume that you want to minimise your risk and maximise success for your business idea (crazy, I know). One of the surest ways of doing that is by identifying a customer type with a problem big enough that they are willing to pay for it to be solved at a price that works for you. There’s very little point building a business where your costs (emotional and financial) outweigh the value you receive.
Too often we come across founders who want to sell to millions of people. A million is an unfathomable amount. So let’s break it down to something you can imagine.
One hundred people.
What questions would you ask your first hundred ideal customers? What assumptions are you making about them and importantly your ability to reach them?
A few questions you want to know the answer to:
Do they have the problem you’re trying to solve?
Do they care about solving the problem?
Do they spend time trying to solve the problem?
Do they spend money trying to solve the problem?
What behaviours do these hundred all exhibit?
Where do they hang out online and offline?
Can you access these hundred easily?
Do they understand what your offer is?
Will they use your product?
Typically most founders make assumptions about these answers and build expensive products before recognising that nobody wants their thing.
How do you avoid this?
Well, Steve Blanks famously said, “Get out of the building.” And by that, he meant that you should go find your ideal customers and talk to them. Ask them open-ended questions and listen. Really listen. More often than not, you’ll hear the same thing over and over again.
And by talking to these people, you may find your first few customers, too.
Now the hard work begins
Once you’ve found out these answers it’s time to build something to help you validate your assumptions. Before you may have had to find a developer, a development house or learn to build your website or app to understand if there is a market need for your solution.
However, no-code makes it easier for you to build your business without the need for a developer – at least in the early stages to serve your first hundred customers.
Smarter people than I have listed the tools you can use to build pretty much any business. Two great examples are Michael Novotny with Nocodestack and Doc Williams and his ‘Build with me’ series.
There you will learn the tools you need to be able to build your business.
I recommend the best tool for customer discovery is whatever you feel comfortable with and allows you to quickly provide value. Your customers probably (almost definitely) don’t care what you built your app or service with, as long as it solves their problem.
And you’ll get it wrong. Using no-code allows you to pivot fast enough to your customers’ needs’.
However, my personal stack is:
Carrd – Testing messaging and getting your potential customers to commit their interest via an email list.
Adalo – Building Progressive Web Apps to test retention
Zapier – Automating my products
Typeform – Getting customer feedback or qualitative data from my potential customers
Airtable – Storing data for my apps
Softr/Pory.io – Creating list-based/curated web applications
Notion – Testing demand for an idea
MailerLite – Sending emails
Stripe – Taking payments. This is very important.
When picking your tool, optimise it for the type of learner you are and what you’re trying to build. If you need a course on a subject to accelerate your learning, buy one. If you need accountability, build in public on Twitter. If you need financial incentives, get a paying client and build.
Measure, Build, Learn (Repeat)
In Eric Ries’ Lean Startup book, there’s a phrase. Build, measure, learn. It’s often thrown around startup land as a phrase to tattoo on your forehead – and heart.
However, I like to flip the statement around.
Measure
What do you want to find out? Write down what you want to discover and rank them in importance, risk and cost. Ask yourself “Which assumption break my business if it’s wrong?”
“Do people want my product and are people willing to pay for it?”
Build
What is the smallest thing you can do to test your assumption with the least amount of risk and smallest cost? This is where No-Code comes into play.
You could build a website with payment for early access in half a day.
Learn
Okay, what happened? Did people buy my product? Did they sign up? Do they stay? What went wrong? What went right?
You may have built the right product, but for the wrong audience. Or you may have picked a customer type that will never pay. Or you may have the right user, but they are not the decision-maker.
Make a decision and test your new assumption or tweak an old assumption.
Summary
No-code and visual development is the future of development. But it’s also the future of building niche profitable businesses. The bedrock of success is in picking a customer who has a well-defined problem that you can solve quickly.
It’s important to continuously learn who your customers are, and continuously build value for them. By focusing on your customers’ and building what they need – not what they say they need you’ll build a more successful and robust business.
There’s an American phrase - “Riches are in niches”. I only say it’s American, but it doesn’t rhyme in British English. However, it’s true. Focus on and find your first 100 customers, and immerse yourself with them. Ask them the right questions and find out how willing they are to pay by building and shipping fast based on their feedback.
And even if you are a developer, no-code can help accelerate your learning about your customer, your business and yourself.
Written by Dan Parry,
Co-Founder, Head of Product
