How to Find Product-Market-Fit by Conducting User Interviews -- Gregor Maric, CEO of Parallel Office

GUEST BIO

Gregor is the CEO of Parallel Office, an International metaverse startup that combines AI, Blockchain, and VR to create a virtual office that is more immersive, productive, and inclusive. He is a mentor for New Chip and Impact hub, coaching web3 companies on go-to-market, equity fundraising, token sale, value proposition, and growth hacking. 

Gregor has mentored over 200,000 people on YouTube and has published several 5-star courses on NFTs on Udemy and Skillshare. He is a multiple-time founder with the most recent exit in the AI and Web3 space. Gregor has worked as a management consultant for over a decade at KPMG and EY on cutting-edge projects involving technologies like AI and Blockchain, and has been involved in the crypto space since 2016, mining, trading, and building.

MAIN INSIGHT

Interview at least 100 potential customers before building your product in order to understand their pain points and create a good value proposition.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Create a hypothesis about who your target persona could be that is based on the problem your product solves.
2. Create an Excel sheet and reach out to 30-40 people you want to interview.
3. After a few people reply and you do a few interviews, evaluate and update your target persona as you learn more.
4. Repeat this process until you've done 100 interviews.

MORE FROM Parallel Office

Parallel Office allows you transform your remote work with virtual reality co-working. Reach out to Gregor Maric on LinkedIn or learn more at paralleloffice.io

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Transcript

Today, I am sitting down with Gregor.

He is the CEO of Parallel Office, which is an international metaverse startup that combines AI,

blockchain, and VR to create a virtual office that is immersive and more productive and more inclusive.

So he has a varied background as a mentor for new chip and impact hub.

He's coached web three companies on go to market equity fundraising,

growth hacking and more.

He's mentored over 200,000 people on YouTube with his videos on how to create

NFTs and generate collectible art and everything that's going on in the web three space.

So he's also worked as a management consultant for over a decade at KPMG and EY on

cutting edge projects with AI and blockchain.

And he's been involved in the crypto space for a couple of years as well.

So Greg, I'm super excited to chat with you and learn about what's going on in your background.

Awesome, Kaila. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you so much for everybody that is listening to us. Absolutely.

Um, so can you tell me a little bit about like how and why you got into founding your current company.

Yeah, absolutely. So every company, I guess, starts from a business need. So if a company

starts just from a idea, or basically, we think we have an idea, that's not really a good company,

it has to start from problems or an actual business need from business. Why? So that you

can convert that business into your company. What I'm trying to say is that we talked with

many different companies and they were all kind of talking about the same pain point. After having

talked with lots and lots of different companies, it made sense to start building our business. So.

It was a research-based start basically, if that makes sense.

Okay, very interesting. So we put a lot of analysis into it upfront.

I've started a previous startup where I kind of had a great idea. I saw the business need for it.

I didn't really talk to different companies about it. I just saw the potential in different

companies and I built it. The result was that after building it, I reached out to customers and

I figured out that it didn't really make that much sense for the other customers. So I had to go and,

find them. Then I reached out to more customers and I found out that actually it made a little

bit more sense, but not that much sense. So it was kind of a trial and error and it took a really long time to figure out

what really the market needed. So lesson learned this time, I didn't want to build a product starting from kind of starting

from my imagination and thinking about what the business or what the problem might really be. But interviewing the potential

buyer persona or the user that might be interested in this product and understanding from them what is the pain point, understanding from them how

they're doing that process that I want to solve right now.

And then,

figuring out if it makes sense to go into this market and build something for this.

Wow. Yeah, I think that's a really good process. I think that's where a lot of companies get stuck

with having to do that ongoing kind of trial and error process. And it can take like months

or years to finally find that product market bit. So is that like the main insight you'd like to

to focus on sharing with everybody,

like interviewing your customers up or potential customers upfront to build your product?

For early stage startups, I think one of the biggest reasons why they struggle

or fail is because they don't find product markets fit or they don't create a good value proposition.

Without a good value proposition, they cannot generate any revenue,

they cannot generate any traction and therefore they cannot get any investment.

And yeah, without any investment, the startup is going to fail.

And as I said, startups usually tend to create a product. And once the product is in an MVP stage

or in a kind of a product that users can use it,

then they reach out to customers and try to figure out what are the best features, what to fine tune and so forth.

That's a great, that's not really a great approach because you lose, you end up losing a lot of time.

This is not really my idea. This is from a acceleration program

that I did in Canada, in Montreal called District 3.

So in their program, they...

Predict or they plan that each startup should interview 100, 100 potential customers before

starting to build or to create anything. So by interviewing these customers, not talking to

these customers about your idea about what you're trying to solve, but actually asking this customer

what their pain point is, how they are doing the current process that they're doing right now,

And what would they imagine as a solution or have they used anything else as a solution for something like this?

That's kind of all of the information that you really want. You don't want to know about the pricing. You don't want to know about if the features that you thought could benefit them.

Why? Because that is going to lead to the conversation direction that is not going to be led by the person that is actually having the problem.

They're going to try to think about solutions or things that you are telling them about.

So there is a really good book that's called the MUM test.

And it is basically talking about how a customer conversation should go.

That you should basically listen, that you should not talk about your product

and that you should in short, just ask for the pain points and figure out the pain points.

Once you know the pain points, then you can in a later conversation.

Then you can propose ideas and your product to those pain points and try to quantify how much those pain points are worth your customer

to think about a pricing for your value proposition.

So after interviewing 100 customers, you get your idea changes through time because you

interview 10, you interview 20, 30.

That's a lot of people that it's a big commitment. 40, 50, 60, 70, 100 people.

Once you really reach 100 interviews, you have a great idea.

And not only that, you've created a great network. to create a great network of people that...

Told you about their pain point. And now if you have a solution that is for them, they're already

in your network and you can reach out to them with a well tailored solution for their product and with

a message that also makes sense. Meaning, if I know what their pain point is, I can tell them,

Hey, I'm going to save you 30% or 40% of what you are currently doing. Why? Because I'm sure what

their pain point is and how I can solve it. Why? Because I interviewed them, I didn't tell them

them about my product, what I'm doing and stuff like that. I asked them where they're suffering, where they're losing

time. Are they really? Yeah, are they looking for a solution in that? Or are they kind of happy with how things are? So that

really sets the groundwork for creating a really good value proposition and get getting all of the ideas ready for whatever

application or product you're building.

Wow, okay, yes. I have heard this, um...

This method of talking with your potential customers upfront before,

but I haven't heard anybody go so in depth with it that they're recommended talking to a hundred people upfront.

So that is really interesting in and of itself. How do you find 100 potential customers?

That's a great question with automation mostly. I create robots that send messages on LinkedIn,

But yeah, just just basically identifying a buyer persona, a couple of buyer personas that you think would be most likely

people identifying their profile on LinkedIn, and doing a few searches in different countries and reaching out to them on

LinkedIn, potentially with different profiles, if you really need a lot. But this is a process that should last between

two to three months. So in this kind of two months, if you're going fast to three months, you should interview you should

interview 100 people. Why 100 people because your idea and your value proposition is going to change and not just going to

be interviewing the same person, you're going to be interviewing.

Related people and you're going to be getting really a good idea that is going to be evolving. And as you're as you collect all

of this feedback, your know how in the market and in the pain

points and your question that you ask are going to be much better by the end, you're going to become an expert in the subject. And probably you are

already an expert if you're trying to build something in the space that you are working.

But to be sure that that's really what the market wants, you need to, in my opinion,

to be more sure and kind of reduce the time afterwards of building functionalities that

really users don't care about. And also coming up with pricing and offerings that don't make that

much sense of that maybe scare customers away or maybe just.

Give your product a too low pricing, which is the case with most startups, which kind of since they don't have any customers, they sell their products for really cheap, showing that it kind of has no value.

While other companies that have a similar product that are more established will be selling that for much more expensive. So somebody seeing these two pricing might think that there is something kind of very strange. Why are they selling it for so cheap?

There might be something wrong with it or data might not be accurate or whatever,

or they're just a startup and they, uh, not doing a really great job.

It doesn't, it doesn't, might not convey the quality that that should be reflected by the pricing,

but proper pricing. So all of that,

all of those things can be figured out by talking with your potential customers. And I'm stressing this, I'm stressing this a lot,

And it's a very long and painful process, because you might want to give up because finding 100 people and interviewing 100

people, it's very challenging, but it is, yeah, it is what it is. So it is going to make you grow, it is going to give you a

network and it's going to give you the ability to have a very clear value proposition for the market.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, that's very interesting. I feel like I've had the same experience with running my podcast because I'm up to,

by the time I'm recording this, I've done 55 interviews throughout the year of 2022.

So this isn't going to be published till 2023. But yeah, it's definitely given me a network and it's definitely

like given me more insight into the type of people that I'm talking to.

It's like I hear the same problems over and over from the same type of person.

Then it's like you just get a feel for what people are thinking about,

and what they care about, and what they tried already.

So that's interesting. I think, I think. Um.

Like, did you have an easy time of like, getting people to hop on calls with you?

Or did you did you pitch it as just like a networking call?

Or what did you do? No, it's not easy. It's not that easy.

You have to try out different messages on LinkedIn. So but they're not sales messages.

So people when you ask people for their feedback, and you're just asking them like, Hey, can

I interview you because I'm building a product and I would like to know what you think about

the market of automation. They're more likely to jump on a short 15 minute call than if

you are kind of trying to sell them something. So like that, at least you also manage to

establish connection. And then after you establish that connection afterwards, you can reach

out and be like, Hey, would you like to be a demo user for that app that thing that we

talked about like long time ago or maybe not even long time ago. So yeah, you have a potential,

you have the part of the interview, you get the pain points, and then later on you get

them as a beta user. And if that beta user likes your application, they become a potential customer.

Hmm. Okay. So you're just mainly talking to them for 15 minutes or do you talk to them

for longer? Like, is that enough to get the insights out of them?

Say it's the minimum is 15 minutes, but usually the call is last up to 30 minutes, the meeting, the booking meeting is


call. We'll ask you a few more questions. Otherwise, you know,

thank you so much. I've already kind of asked the most important questions in the beginning.

Okay, so what are the most important questions that you make sure to get in each of these informational interviews?

So how is it that you are doing this that you need to solve right now?

What is it that you're doing? All right. And is there, do you see any pain points with that? Is it like, do you think you could do it better? Is it like, how much time are you spending? Do you know what your peers are doing? Are you what kind of software are you using?

Do you think that this could be done differently?

What ways do you think it could be done? And if there was something that kind of existed right now that wouldn't make you sleep at

night, what would that be like in terms of this?

So yeah, questions like that without giving them like anything, any kind of idea like,

Oh yeah, that's exactly what we are doing. We're building something similar that is, no, no, forget that.

So it's not about your app, it's not about your time, it's about them.

It's about listening to what they have to say about trying to really understand if there is a problem

in what you're trying.

So maybe there is no problem. Maybe you think that there is a problem,

but this guy is actually doing it perfectly fine and would not spend $100 on the license for your thing

because he's doing it right now in Excel.

And why should I spend another $100 for another software that maybe is just doing something very similar?

Maybe one little feature is better, but that feature is not worth $100.

Maybe it's worth $6, but not $100, what do you think? So only by talking with them you can figure this out.

Hmm. So, with the pricing, do you get a sense of like what they have spent on already to try to

solve the problem? And then that gives you like clues to what you might be able to charge for it?

Or how do you get that $100 versus $6 kind of insight into what to charge?

That's a great question. You can think about what they are, what software they're using right now,

what licenses they're using, how much are they spending right now on that, how much time,

if you're kind of maybe saving them on time, how much time are they spending on creating the

different things that they have to do for their process and how much time less are they going to,

spend also in unquantifiable benefits, as in maybe it's going to give some other benefits down the

the line. So maybe it's going to improve customer satisfaction,

or maybe it's going to do something, something that can be really quantified in the process immediately. So.

However, what is important is that you figure out that you quantify how much you are improving what they're doing.

And that that has to be at least 10 times better than that current process for them to have a compelling reason to change. If

it's not at least 10 times better than what they're doing

right now, yeah, it might be good, good change, but not not it's not the great basis for a startup or for a product.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense.

So could you give the case study of when you tried to do this for parallel office?

Because you said as you interviewed 100 people, your value proposition changed,

your understanding of your potential customers changed.

So what was it like when you first started? What was your initial thought?

And then how did that evolve as this interview process went on?

Well, we started by having kind of a grand user idea of building the centralized metaverse,

Web3, VR and all of that.

But as we kind of talk with partners and companies that could potentially be interested, they

said, yeah, that's great, but you know what, I mean, I have no idea how to, what to do with that.

And it sounds fantastic and all, but it's just way out there.

Way too many technologies, web3, VR, we have no idea how to use it.

All right, so we're like, all right, then let's kind of talk to more people and kind of figure

out what they need. And we talked with a little bit more people. And then we came up with another

idea of maybe helping companies onboard them into virtual reality by providing them with.

VR hardware on a licensing approach, meaning online subscription fee. So lots of different devices at a very cheap price so that I could kind of get in on early but then

after kind of

Talking with people, we still didn't create anything, we just kind of like ideas.

We continued talking with people and we realized that people don't really want VR devices because

they don't know how they would use these VR devices yet.

So still, again, talking with more people, we figured out that there are different processes

inside of HR that could be ideal processes and for which people are actually interested in.

For example, like HR onboarding, training, and so forth. We realized that by creating,

virtual offices like the one that you see, for example, in my background, and putting an,

onboarding experience in there or an interview experience or a sales experience, we have something

that companies actually want and are willing to pay for.

So then we decided, all right, that's great. Let's focus our efforts on this

and let's build our first go-to-market.

And let's think about our partnership approach, who we're gonna spend our efforts,

which kind of partners and what we're gonna talk with our partners

who is going to be our ideal customer.

And we figure out who our ideal customer would be and what kind of partnerships we should make.

And we managed to figure out the pricing And so, yeah, so that was kind of just by talking and talking, talking with as many

people as possible. So in this case, it wasn't 100 exactly. In my previous startup, it was 100.

In this example, we still haven't reached 100. But that's because we're still going through this

process of fine-tuning our offering. Virtual reality is a very new concept.

It's very new, so that is no model or anything that you can follow previously.

So right now, lots of businesses also don't know about virtual reality, so there has to be a lot of education that has to be done.

And that also is why we have to do more interviews, because we have to figure out the language that we have to use with these people,

and also what kind of how to create this education to help them on board into what we're doing.

Wow. Okay. That is very interesting. And I like how it started off with just like,

I'm going to solve like all of crypto and I'm going to make like the best,

I'm going to make like the best, what was that like web three experience or like all in one?

Exactly. Web three, the centralized business metaverse. It was a great project, but then as we kind of like, uh,

thought about it and talk with a couple of people, we realized that it was too massive.

That is still our dream and our mission, but, uh, we're going to break it down with something that actually has a value

proposition market where we can generate revenue.

Right. Yeah. And it turned out you had to drill down to one specific problem,

which is the virtual office space. And that's what you ended up solving.

Even more down, which is on-boarding processes. So HR on-boarding processes.

So companies, we are going after companies that are hiring lots of people

and whose on-boarding process is relatively weak, meaning that once they join the company,

they read the PDF document, they watch a video, they watch some training,

they sleep kind of hoody on your computer.

Instead, they put like one of these headsets on one of these headsets and they are...

In a virtual office that's just like the office where they're going to be working.

In some cases, they're greeted by their CEO who greets them, tells them about their job.

And then leaves them in this space where they can open different books, they can play a movie,

they can defend, depends on the experience, but it's very immersive, very interactive, very.

Allows the person to remember it much better. So after kind of the whole experience is over, you

kind of change area and you go in the place where you get some questions asked at you and you shoot

a gun and different answers and whatever the experience ends and then you know basically

all the things that you might have not remembered if you just read them on a pdf like how many

headquarters does the company have what is the name of the ceo etc etc etc wow okay i can imagine

that now and I can see how that would be like way better than just like sitting down in a desk for

three hours reading like PDF documents and then an HR person coming by for 15 minutes to ask you

some questions. Yeah, that's really cool. Wow. Okay. Yeah. I can see how once you drill down to

like one very specific problem, it gets more obvious to people like what the value is and then

and it becomes more obvious why they should be willing to pay for it.

Because if you just said VR and Web3, those just feel like buzzwords to me because I've never actually used it before.

So I can imagine that's what a lot of people were going through.

But when you talk to them and go from their perspective, with the problems they currently have,

then it's more about opening people's minds too.

Well, this is how ER could actually solve this problem that you didn't realize could be solved.

That's very interesting. So.

I do like to ask like for like the step by step process that you would give to other people

if they wanted to implement this, you know, talk to potential customers up front and create the

value proposition type of strategy. Yeah, absolutely. So you create a hypothesis,

that you think would make sense. You that comes from your problem that you're trying to solve.

So you create a hypothesis that's going to be the basis of your value proposition.

After that, you identify your target persona or your target person.

You can start with one profile and then you can evolve the profile as you learn more information.

And after that, it comes the fun part. After that, you create an Excel sheet and you

identify 10 people that you want to interview and you send them messages.

Probably none of them are going to reply. So you will send to another 10, 20, 30,

and maybe in like 20, 30 people, since you're not sending sales messages,

maybe like three or four maybe are going to reply if you've casted a message that doesn't sound

salesy and doesn't sound arrogant and sounds humble.

And you're asking somebody for free time. So you should be humble.

No matter what you're building and how great your idea is.

So that's pretty much it. And that's just repeat the process and until you get to 100.

And as you are writing this, you should be creating a file where you keep your,

where you start refining your value proposition.

So you start refining your problem, your solution, your market and your basically your value proposition.

So you should have one file where you have maybe a sheet with three columns, problem, solution and market. And then just one other

place where you just write your value proposition or the different hypothesis that you are testing.

So when you're doing this interviews, you're basically testing different hypothesis that you

have based on the problem. So you're asking them like, yeah, what is your pain? And basically,

that's what you're trying to understand, that pain is what you're trying to solve the hypothesis.

Okay i like this process i'm gonna write this down because i think this could be this is useful not just if you're starting a new business but like if you're ever expanding to like a new.

Like product or aspect of a new aspect of your product or to a new market which so this is this is very useful and very helpful are there any like pitfalls that people might fall into as they try to go through these steps.

Absolutely. They want to talk about their product. They want to talk about what they're doing.

It feels so natural when you hear the maybe the pain points. That's a big problem because that's

not what that's absolutely not what you want to do. That's just you lost one interview if you talk

about your product. So it no matter how like excited even the person might seem like, oh yeah,

that would be so amazing if there was something like that. Just forget about it. You reach out to

to them and they'll be as excited as they are probably right now.

Maybe they found something else, but then you find out about the competitor

and it doesn't really matter.

So don't talk about your product and don't get demoralized.

Uh, if you don't get any replies, it's all right. You got to make some changes, maybe change your CV on LinkedIn, your

title, change the message, change your picture or whatever.

Doesn't matter.

It makes some changes and fine tune it until you get more and more answers.

And then there's plenty of people that you can send and ask for feedback.

Really plenty in the world. You're not going to run unless you're doing something that's like super, super

specific, but if you're doing something that's super, super specific, those people

are few and there might be very likely interested in what you are doing.

So, uh, just be more careful about the message that you write.

So, but in 99% of the cases, there's going to be plenty of people to who to write.

So just don't get demoralized.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Okay, those are good tips. Well, thank you so much, Greg,

for everything that you've shared today.

This is like a really useful, really practical, you know, idea on how to find your product market

that I think a lot of people are gonna benefit from. And just as we're wrapping up,

I just like to shine a spotlight on you.

Are there any projects you're working on? Is there anything you'd like people to know?

And is there anywhere you'd like people to get in touch with you?

I think this show is all about you and your audience. If people want to reach out to me, they can find me on LinkedIn.

I want to thank everybody that has stayed with us all the way until the end of the show.

I think you are doing an amazing job.

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. And again, thank you everybody for listening.

All right. All right, thanks so much, Greg.