YC 

Another cool hack that we've seen some great success with, actually a  YC  company in this batch is actually selling products to firefighters. And they realized that cold  email  introductions was just not working, was not a way that they could get through to customers. So, what they did was they actually just dropped by fire stations in-person. They didn't even, you know,  email  them to say that they were coming ahead of  time . They just showed up and they said, "Hey, could we speak to the fire chief? Could we talk to someone about this  problem  that we've got a solution to?" And you know what? It worked great. They managed to get dozens of in-person, you know, 10 to 15 minute long meetings just by showing up. 

The fourth  question  is, "What, if anything, have you done to try to solve this problem?" One of the biggest things that I've encountered while helping  YC  companies over the last few years, is that if potential customers are not already exploring potential solutions to their  problem , it's possible that the  problem  that you're trying to solve is not a burning enough  problem  for customers for them to be even interested in your better solution to this  product . So, this  question  tries to get at the root of that issue. Is the person who encounters this  problem  already trying to solve this? 

Talking to users is so critical that at the core of kind of  YC  's teachings, there are only two things that you must do in order to  search  your company. You need to code or build your  product  and talk to users. So, this is easier said than done. I want to provide today some tactical advice on how to  plan  your strategy for talking to users, as well as some questions and strategies that you can use to conduct your own user interviews at the beginning of your company. A lot of the advice that I'll present today is actually synthesized fantastically in this  book  actually written by a  YC  founder called, "The Mom Test." 

Eric: Hi everyone. My name's  Eric Migicovsky . I'm a partner here at  YC . I actually started a company that went through  Y Combinator  back in 2011. I started a company called Pebble. We made one of the first smartwatches. I am really excited to be here to talk about talking to users because this is one of the perennial things that you always hear about as one of the critical factors in starting a company. The best founders maintain a direct connection to their users throughout the lifespan of their entire company. They maintained a direct connection because they need to extract information from their users at all different stages of running their company. 

YC  Partner  Eric Migicovsky  shares a framework for asking questions and collecting  feedback  from your users.