#36 - User Research as a Growth Engine at Early Stage Startups with Loic Alix-Brown

One of the key tenets of the Lean Startup approach is ensuring you have product-market fit. To find it, you'll need to talk to potential users, and get them to confirm your product is something they really need, and are willing to pay for. Loic Alix-Brown started doing user interviews to learn if he had product-market fit for his Instagram hashtag startup Flick. But he didn't stop doing research after the MVP, it became an integral part of the way he's built his business. 

This week on Awkward Silences, Erin and JH chatted with Loic about how he built his MVP, how his research strategy has changed as his business has grown, how he used research to find the right pricing structure for his customers, and how he's maintained a regular research cadence amidst the chaos of launching a startup. 

Highlights

[5:27] How do you decide what's viable enough for a minimum viable product?

[7:20] What happens after the MVP?

[8:28] How to find users to talk to for generative research.
[11:17] Interview users who are less active, or even ones who have cancelled, for a better overall picture.

[12:42] Loic talks about why qualitative interviews are more helpful at very early stages than quantitive testing.

[15:58] How Loic restructured his pricing to make more sense for his users.

[19:46] How Loic learned about who was using his product most often. 

[25:25] Adding a survey to your cancellation flow can help you learn why users leave.

[27:26] Keeping a regular cadence of user research helps the Flick team stay on top of user needs.

[28:36] Solve one problem at a time, and build up that way.

About our Guest

Loic Alix-Brown is the Co-Founder of Flick, a SaaS solution to help entrepreneurs, content creators and small businesses find the best hashtags to reach their target audience on Instagram.