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The Entrepreneur · № 05

Customer Interview

Interviewed 10 potential customers about a problem they have, and wrote up what you learned about what they'd actually pay to solve.

The idea

Don't pitch. The whole milestone is your kid not talking about their idea. Ask the ten people what's annoying about how they currently solve the problem. What did they try. What didn't work. If your kid walks out having mentioned their own product, they wasted both people's time. Most adults can't run a customer interview either. That's how products end up nobody wants.

Steps
  1. Write five questions about the problem. Zero about your kid's solution.
  2. Talk to ten people. Take notes during, not after.
  3. After each one, write down the surprising thing they said. Surprise is the data.
  4. Synthesize across all ten. What did most people try? What didn't work? What would they pay to fix?
What counts

Ten real conversations with notes and a one-paragraph synthesis of what your kid learned. A short writeup is plenty.