Dec 1, 2022 · 17m · y-combinator
How To Talk To Users | Startup School · Y Combinator
0:00 / 0:00
▶ Watch on YouTube →
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this Y Combinator Startup School lecture, Group Partner Gustaf Alströmer provides a comprehensive framework for how startup founders should find, interview, and learn from prospective users. He details tactical strategies for conducting effective problem discovery interviews, avoiding common conversational traps, and translating qualitative customer insights into validated Minimum Viable Products (MVPs).
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The partners as informed peer 0.0 Guest teaching 0.0 Guest disagreement 0.0 The partners pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is the partners, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 11:13 Critique of user-proposed feature requests
In a completely non-combative presentation, the most assertive stance is Gustaf warning founders that users generally have valid problems but offer poor solutions.
Hardest push from the partners ▶ 7:21 Interviewer probing deeper on non-actionable reportsDuring the mock interview roleplay, Gustaf gently presses Amy to explain why her company takes no action on their existing consultant reports.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 9:30 Teaching proper inquiry vs. bad questionsGustaf educates the audience on why asking hypothetical questions like 'will you use our product' yields misleading data and derails interviews.
The partners hold their own ▶ 14:05 Evaluating problem value against default softwareGustaf demonstrates product strategy expertise by highlighting how difficult it is to displace spreadsheet defaults unless a dramatic improvement is delivered.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The partners as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The partners pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Why Founders Must Talk to Users and Myth Debunking | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | This is a solo presentation by Gustaf Alströmer debunking myths around startup formation and explaining early customer feedback at Airbnb. The host is not present, resulting in zero host and combativeness scores. | |
| Identifying and Finding Potential Users to Interview | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Gustaf outlines methods for sourcing initial interviewees via personal networks, coworkers, and online communities using a mock carbon emissions startup. As a monologue, no host interaction or combativeness takes place. | |
| User Interview Best Practices and Execution Guidelines | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Gustaf details user interview rules and conducts a friendly mock discovery call with Amy. The interaction is fully cooperative and scripted to demonstrate proper inquiry techniques. | |
| Key Questions to Ask and Observing User Behavior | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Gustaf presents tactical dos and don'ts for customer discovery questions and emphasizes observing user behavior directly. There is no host involvement or disagreement. | |
| Focusing on Problems vs. Solutions and Feature Requests | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Gustaf explains why founders must separate customer problem exploration from solution design, referencing historical cases from Gmail and Airbnb. The segment is an instructional monologue. | |
| Evaluating Problem Value and Audience Willingness to Pay | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Gustaf delivers guidance on validating commercial value, competing against incumbent spreadsheets, and assessing audience sales friction without host participation. | |
| Engaging Early Users and Building Community Channels | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Gustaf concludes with best practices on testing prototypes and fostering direct community channels like Slack and WhatsApp with early users. The monologue ends with a brief recap. |
Statements from this episode (22)
Brian Chesky spent a weekend with Airbnb's very first guest
“Brian is the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. On the left side of the photo is Amol. Amol was the very first guest on Airbnb. They actually spent a weekend together in San Francisco when Airbnb kind of launched.”
The best founders learn directly from users throughout the company's life
“Great founders talk to future customers before they even have a product. In fact, the very best founders in the world learn directly from their users throughout the life of their company.”
Paying customers are the only stakeholders who will keep founders honest
“Users and customers will keep you honest. They are the only stakeholders actually paying you anything. If anyone will tell you the truth, it will be them.”
Airbnb co-founders still receive host calls on their personal cell phones
“Still today, Brian and Joe gets calls from hosts on their personal cell phone numbers. I remember them telling me that on the first day I worked at Airbnb, Why do they do that? Well, it's the number that they put on the website and share with all of their host…”
Most founders avoid personal connections by hiding behind no-reply email addresses
“Unfortunately, most founders still don't build personal connections with their users today. They hide behind info ad emails or do not reply emails.”
Personal network contacts are responsive but often give less honest feedback
“It's always easy to interview people that you know, or people who are on your network. They're simply the most likely to respond, but perhaps can be less honest in their answers to not offend you.”
LinkedIn, Reddit, and Discord are top channels for finding early users
“When asking YC founders how they found their early users, some of the most common answers were LinkedIn, Reddit forums, Slack or Discord communities, and sometimes in-person events.”
A five-minute video interview beats thousands of written survey responses
“You can learn a lot more from a five minute video interview than 500 or 5000 survey responses.”
Introducing product ideas early in interviews severely biases customer feedback
“The most, most, most important thing here is to not introduce your idea till maybe at the end of the call or maybe not at all. Doing this too early can bias them in their answers.”
Founders must observe actual user behavior because changing it is hard
“You want to deeply understand their behavior, not just what they're saying, but what they're doing because changing the behavior will be hard.”
Asking users if they will use a product yields meaningless positive answers
“Will you use our product? They're probably going to say yes, but they're not going to mean anything to you in that answer.”
Users describe problems well, but founders must design the actual solutions
“Remember, their job is to tell you about the problem. Your job is to think about what features to solve that problem. So, ask, asking them about your job isn't really gonna help you.”
Early Gmail users requested split-pane views because emails loaded too slowly
“Early days of Gmail, users were asking Paul Buchheit, the founder of Gmail, to view both the inbox and the actual email that they were reading on the same screen. Now, why would they ask for that? Well, the reason was simply that Gmail was too slow and people …”
Early Airbnb guests demanded host phone numbers because they lacked trust
“In early Airbnb, a lot of guests wanted to have the phone numbers of the host, so they can call them. And we were like, why do you need that? It just turned out that they didn't fully trust the platform. Like, we had not displayed enough trust in Airbnb, so th…”
Interviewed users have no incentive to say no to proposed features
“Users don't have incentive to say no to really any additional features. If you ask for this feature or this feature, they'll probably say yes to everything, right?”
Founders should build MVPs quickly rather than over-analyzing user feedback
“Don't over-intellectualize this process. Really, you just want to start designing the MVP as fast as you can, but you want to make sure you have accurate information when you decide the MVP.”
Replacing spreadsheets requires building a dramatically better product experience
“To move someone off Excel or Google Spreadsheet,
You need to make the experience of your solution dramatically better.
They're not going to pay you hundreds of dollars a month for something they can almost as easily do in Google Spreadsheet or Excel.”
Selling software to contractors is notoriously harder than selling to startups
“For example, selling to plumbers or contractors is notoriously difficult compared to selling to startups.
The first two groups just don't change their tools or the software very often versus startups are open to trying new things all the time.”
Airbnb tested unbuilt features by handing phone prototypes to lobby visitors
“We used to do this at Airbnb all the time. We'd go downstairs in our office, and we'd find some people that were waiting for an interview or waiting for getting a coffee or something, and we'd just show them the latest version of the app. This would be an InVi…”
Never guide users when testing interactive product prototypes
“The key thing, if you're doing this tactic, is to not tell them what to do. Do not tell them what to do. Just watch them play around with it. You can tell them a specific goal, like try to make a booking at Airbnb, or try to do a search with dates on Airbnb, o…”