Rob Boukine describes how Noibu pivoted away from its original 3D virtual shopping product by conducting structured discovery interviews with retail clients.
“Going into this first set of interviews, we had no idea that we would be doing error monitoring. It was actually discovered through this first set of interviews. When a client actually began talking about that.”
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More from Rob Boukine
Insight
Boukine: Abandon ideas if interviewees show no emotional reaction to the problem
“Like there was a little bit of pain point, but the student wasn't getting emotional. They weren't getting frustrated. They weren't like seeing a huge reaction from the student. And he's like, that's when you know that you really are not onto something when peo…”
Rob BoukineMar 8, 2024▶ 8:02How to Pivot | Rob Boukine, Founder of Noibu · PMF Show
Insight
Boukine: Ignore technical feasibility and business models during initial customer discovery
“So at that stage in interview round number one, it's critical to just find the pain. Don't worry about everything else. You're going to confuse yourself. It's so hard to find a pain like that. So you should just focus on doing everything you can to finding out…”
Rob BoukineMar 8, 2024▶ 18:21How to Pivot | Rob Boukine, Founder of Noibu · PMF Show
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Boukine: Noibu secured two paying customers before writing a line of code
“Only at the end, we asked, how much would you be willing to pay on a monthly basis to be notified of critical bugs on your website? And the range of answers was from 100 to 1000 dollars a month. No one said zero. And we actually got two of them to on the spot …”
Rob BoukineMar 8, 2024▶ 20:16How to Pivot | Rob Boukine, Founder of Noibu · PMF Show
Opinion
Boukine: Anyone claiming startups involve no luck is full of BS
“I think anyone that says there's no element of luck is full of BS.”
Rob BoukineMar 8, 2024▶ 22:50How to Pivot | Rob Boukine, Founder of Noibu · PMF Show
Disclosure
Boukine: My next startup will validate ideas with two-week MVPs maximum
“For my next startup, I'm gonna do the exact same thing, and if that idea doesn't get traction right away, gonna build an MVP in like two weeks max, validate it, see if there's any reasonable positive indicators for like the hypothesis that we set, and then eit…”
Rob BoukineMar 8, 2024▶ 24:24How to Pivot | Rob Boukine, Founder of Noibu · PMF Show
Disclosure
Boukine: Noibu hit just 8 customers and $3K MRR after two years
“And we got it up to, I think it was like eight paying customers, like three K MRR, but it was an absolute grind. I think we were two years in and that's the only traction we got. We weren't paying ourselves. We didn't have any money.”
Rob BoukineMar 8, 2024▶ 2:07How to Pivot | Rob Boukine, Founder of Noibu · PMF Show
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