Uri Levine: evaluation

Transcript context

…Okay, then let's stick with understanding users. Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, wrote the foreword to my book and he called it the Bible for entrepreneurs, and when I sent him the first chapter, he said, "Wow, I wish I had that When I started." I met Steve Wozniak for the first time about 10 years ago. We spoke at the same conference in Guatemala, and look, when I grew up, Steve Wozniak was my technological guru, right so he was the most important person in the technology space in my mind. And then we spoke at the same conference and we had dinner the night before, and the only thing that actually was really important for me is to have a selfie with my idol, right? And so I took up my iPhone and with the iPhone you can take pictures by clicking here on the screen or using the volume button on the side, right? And so I took a selfie with him holding the phone like that and clicking on the volume button and he said, "Finally." And I said, "Finally what?" "Finally someone using it the way that I meant it to be." Now you realize that there is no right or wrong. There are different people that are using different products in different ways, and occasionally if I would have large audience, then I would ask the people, "Okay, how do you use Waze?" Right? "So you go to your destination and you enter destination, and then Waze guides you through the screen with the display of the maneuvers that needs to be made or with the audio guidance of turn right, turn left and so forth. If you are watching the screen, raise your hand." And then I would have about 70% of the people raise their hand." Then I ask people to watch around them and see those people. Then I ask, "If you are listening to the audio prompt, raise your hand." Then I have about 20 or 30 more percent of the people raising their hand. And again, I send people to watch around and see those hands. There is no right or wrong. Different people are using it differently. Now, if you are using Waze in a certain way, up until this moment, you didn't know that there are other people that are using it differently, and to be frank, you don't care. You getting your own value the way that you get it, then you don't really care that there are other people that are getting it differently. But if you are building a product and you don't know that, then you are building the wrong product. You don't know that there are other people that are not like you, and you think that you're building the product for yourself, then you're making a big mistake. And the way to figure it out is, by the way, two things. Number one, watch new users. Simply watch users and see what they're doing. And number two, if they're not doing what you expect them to do, then ask them why, because this why is the one that is going to make your product successful. You understand the why and the next version you're going to address that. Now, this is in particular when it comes to understanding users. why is the one that is going to make your product successful. You understand the why and the next version you're going to address that. Now, this is in particular when it comes to understanding users. Obviously there are a lot of users, but we can group them into several groups of their ability to adapt something new, and something new is not necessarily new technology. We think about it as a new technology, but it's not necessarily about technology. It's about new behavior, right? And then we look at the entire population and every time that we look into large numbers, they will have normal distribution, right? So the bell curve of the distribution, and then we will have about 2% of the populations that they're the innovatives. The innovatives are going to use something new because it's new. That's it. They care about this subject and they going to be the first one to hear about it and they're going to try that out because it's new. The second group is usually what we will get to see as the first users are the early adapters. As soon as they realize that there is value, they're going to give it a try. And if there is value, then they will keep on using it, and if there is no value, then they will quit. Right? The third group is the most important group. This is where market leaders are, right? This is called the early majority. This is about one third of the population, and the one that wins the early majority wins the market. The challenge with this group, with the people in this group, is that they're afraid of change. So their state of mind is, don't rock the boat. Whatever I'm currently doing is good enough for me. So if you have Salesforce.com, which is absolutely amazing, their reaction is going to be, "What's wrong with Excel?" And because they're afraid of change, they are not going to try something new. Now the reason is that at the end of the day, they're afraid that this is going to be too complex for them and they will not get it, and they don't want to be embarrassed and they don't want to feel like idiots. And guess what? People don't like to feel like idiots, and so they are not going to try. And you need to see those people to understand their barriers for starting to use your service. And by the way, the solution is always the same. Simplicity. Leonardo da Vinci said that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. If you want to make it simple, in your journey of building a product, we basically say this is iteration to iteration to iteration. In many of those you add features and you add features and you add features until you all of a sudden you add the features that people are using. What you really want to do next is remove the rest of the features that people are not using because they're adding complexity. Now, most of the product owners, they're either innovators or early adopters. You cannot understand an early majority person. If you belong to one group, you cannot understand a person from that group unless you watch them and [inaudible 01:10:57]. So the most important part of understanding users is actually seeing those users. And they are not wrong. This is how they behave. So a couple of threads there I'll pull out. One is look for surprising uses of your product because, as you said, you'll realize, "Oh, some people are using this in a way that I didn't expect," and it'll remind you people are not the way you are and don't assume that they're going to want exactly what you're building, so pay attention to things that surprise you. We had Jeffrey Moore on the podcast and he talked through a lot of this stuff, and one of the lessons there to help you bridge that gap from, to the, what is it, the third group? How did you describe it? The late majority?…

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