The benefit of good research habits for startups has been one of our key learnings since starting the Contributor’s program. Rational yet efficient decision-making is a complex balancing act that requires frequent diagnosis and realignment. Good research is the process of gathering and synthesizing evidence in service of making decisions. This is something that many of us do on a regular basis, whether that’s deciding where to go on vacation, choosing what to wear for the day, or—in a business context—identifying how to best serve customers.
A company’s research practice starts the moment a founder has an idea. They ask themselves who else might have this problem? How many of these people exist? How have they tried to solve it? What worked or didn’t work about those solutions? Whether they’re aware of it or not, they’ve already been doing research. But that research probably felt unstructured, yielding useful evidence in inconsistent ways.
A research process is a structured, repeatable way to understand customers and build a knowledge foundation. Research is an invaluable source of input for product development, but before you can get started, you need to make sure the questions lined up will get the insights you need, without influencing the data.
We have two El Cap Contributors who specialize in research. With them as a guide, we’ve developed this research hub. A set of case studies, question templates, and frameworks that our founders can leverage as they hunt for product market fit. This will be a living set of materials, that we will refine and expand upon over time. Think of this as your guide to all-things user research related: what to ask, how to ask it, and how to create your own questions.
Let’s get started.
Developing the right questions