Oji Udezue: evaluation

Transcript context

…What are signs that it's sharp enough, just like in your experience? I know you talked about it steals your time, energy, money focused. What are flags that this is sharp enough in your experience? I think there are two ways to think about it. If you are in the trenches as a founder, the easiest way to map out a sharp problem is draw the current approximate average workflow for your target customer, at least what you think is a target, and then draw the workflow after they've used your software and see how much shorter it is, yes or no. And then try to measure those lines. If you draw them as horizontal lines, try to measure those lines and see if it's much shorter. If it's 2X shorter, 3X shorter, so let's say pre-customer, that is the best way to hone in on it. Post customer, you should talk to the people who are most enthusiastic and derive their workflow and their workflow change and try to measure that. I think that's how you figure out if it's a sharp problem or not. The other thing that we talk about in startup super early stage world is, I call it the whites of their eyes. When you take a problem and you share it with someone who it's going to affect their workflow, and I use the word workflow a ton because I don't use specs anymore or use cases, I think workflows are the unit of productivity. When you see people's eyes get big and they expose more whites to you, you're probably onto something. It's not enough, that's not a workflow thing, that's an excitement thing. But people often react that way when you're solving a really sharp problem for them. And then people spontaneously bring up money, it's like when can I pay? When can I... Those kinds of things give you an indication. Two other versions of the showing more whites of your eyes, which I love. Two other versions of that I've heard is one is you see their pupils dilate and they're just like, "Whoa, I need this now." And then the other is someone described it as, you see this nod of as you're talking, they're just like, "Oh, I get it. I get this." And then they're like, "Okay, we need this in our company."…

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