Ask HN: Doing customer research without the resources?

[sb13]

Hey HN,

Super curious to understand how startups without PMs or UXR conduct research or know what to build next.

As an engineer and now a founder, I’m fascinated by Linear’s approach of “product teams over product managers” where the broader team collectively thinks about the product and how features are delivered, not just the PMs.

I’ve never worked in such a setup, so I wanted to hear from those who have.

How do you collect/synthesize user feedback and decide what to act on? What are some of the challenges you faced because of not having PMs?

[breckenedge]

I like coming up with completely different product ideas. Whole different concepts that go in a totally different direction. Sometimes when this happens, I find an idea (or feature) there that I wish I had in my current product.

Hold brainstorming sessions. Hopefully engineering, design and UX are all occasionally using the product, so they probably have some idea of missing features. Just building gets the juices flowing, even if they’re not the most profitable features, Pareto principle says you’ll spend 80% of time building less valuable things anyway.

If there’s a subreddit or other online community dedicated to your market, sometimes you can mine that for ideas.

And put a dang suggestion box on your product. It doesn’t need to be intrusive, just ask your customers how things are going.

[sb13]

> And put a dang suggestion box on your product. It doesn’t need to be intrusive, just ask your customers how things are going.

Interesting! Has this worked for you?

[breckenedge]

Yes, I use all of these techniques. Making the customer feel like they have a direct line to you is so powerful. I don’t recommend any of the off the shelf feedback systems either, it has to feel natural.

[robinyapockets]

I'm curious about this too.

Feels like you need a specific structure in place to avoid constant context switching. Also I'm guessing it depends on the level of interaction you already have with your user base, e.g. dev tools know their customers already well, but other industries less so.

[brudgers]

Talking to people one at a time is the simplest thing that might work and anything that avoids that is pretend work. Other people's problems aren't abstract, they are real. They aren't in a book, you have to find them one at a time. Good luck.

[sb13]

> Other people's problems aren't abstract, they are real.

Well said!

If there's no PM, I'm guessing everyone in your team talks to customers. How does the team align and prioritize multiple user pain points, requests, or insights?

[brudgers]

If the CEO isn't doing it, what is the point of having a CEO?