You hear this advice in startup land that you need to relentlessly talk to customers to find out what they want.
And I think that can be good advice. But it can also go wrong.
There are many customer conversations that can send you in the wrong direction.
You also often hear this quote from Henry Ford:
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”.
A lot of people take that as “ignore your customers completely”.
And that’s bad advice. You should talk to customers - but you need to get it right.
By that I mean you should listen to your customer’s problems, but largely ignore what they have to say about potential solutions.
When one of Henry Ford’s customers said they wanted a faster horse, a simple follow up could’ve uncovered the underlying problem.
Asking why the customer wanted a faster horse would’ve uncovered that they wanted to get from A to B in a shorter amount of time. That’s the problem.
Once you deeply understand the customer’s problem, the solution, such as a car, is for you to figure out :)