• Startup & Investor Resources
  • Recent Posts
  • Search
  • Contact Me

Instigator Blog

Lean Analytics, startups, angel investing, product management and more!

Useless Feedback

June 14, 2010 by Ben Yoskovitz

Not all feedback is created equal. A lot of feedback is useless. This isn’t necessarily the fault of the person providing the feedback. Oftentimes it’s the fault of the person requesting it, because they don’t really understand why they’re asking for it in the first place.

Startup founders need to go out and validate what they’re doing before they build anything. Or they need to build a super simple minimum viable product and solicit feedback on that. But before that can take place, entrepreneurs need to understand why they’re collecting feedback and what they’re collecting it against.

Without a strong hypothesis and problem statement, there’s no reason to get feedback.

Asking a friend, “What do you think of my idea?” is almost completely useless.

Asking a friend (or someone else who isn’t as biased as your friend, “Do you have this problem, and how painful is it?” is a much more useful query.

Feedback is only valid if it’s anchored to something, and for startups that means having a strong hypothesis and problem statement. These things should be written down. The minute you can put your hypothesis to the test you have a much better opportunity to collect valid and meaningful feedback.

Startups need to solve problems. Problems need to be defined. Define the problem that you’re tackling (without focusing on the solution) and get feedback on that. Otherwise there’s a very good chance you’re collecting useless feedback, or worse, the feedback is actually damaging and pointing you in the wrong direction.

Filed Under: Customer Development

Want more content like this?

Signup for free and you'll get new content as soon as it's available. Thanks!

Ben Yoskovitz

Founding Partner at Highline Beta, a hybrid venture studio and VC firm that works with large, ambitious companies to identify new areas of opportunity through internal and external innovation.

Previously I was VP Product at VarageSale and GoInstant (acq. $CRM), and Founding Partner at Year One Labs.

Angel investments include: Breather, Spoiler Alert, SendWithUs and others.

My bio »

Buy Lean Analytics

Lean Analytics

"Lean Analytics is the missing piece of Lean Startup!" - Dan Martell, founder Clarity

Get the book at leananalyticsbook.com

Get updates

I've moved to Focused Chaos a newsletter focused on startups, investing and more. Please visit there to subscribe and get weekly content.

  • Startup & Investor Resources
  • Recent Posts
  • Search
  • Contact Me
Views expressed here are mine and mine alone.

Copyright © 2023 · Built on the Genesis Framework