I’ve written about Y Combinator‘s mantra before: Talk to your users!
Here is what I have done recently:
- I’ve written a short email to 100 of the most active Exsila users and asked them if they would like to do a short phone call with me. I asked them to send me their phone number and their availability.
- Minutes later I had the first phone numbers, and the replies kept coming.
- Within 48 hours I completed 10 phone calls, all ranging from 30-60 minutes, and sometimes even longer.
- Our users enjoyed and appreciated that I reached out. They felt taken seriously.
- For me it was a huge booster. There is nothing more motivating than talking to happy users. I’ve received a ton of feedback and suggestions. I described what we are working on and what our vision for the future is. It was a true win-win.
- We’ve even made changes to the product based on the feedback. For example some of our regular newsletters turned out to be not very useful, so we removed them.
- We’ve sent out a request to our active users whether they would agree that we interview them and publish those portraits to our community. Within 24 hours 100 users agreed, so we will get a lot of valuable content.
- Of course personal meetings are even deeper. But they are more difficult to set up. I love phone calls and will certainly do that even more now.
