Talking to people is one of the tasks on which every scipreneur will spend a fair amount of time.

Among all the interactions, there will be many with potential customers. Extracting useful information from those dialogues is crucial, not only to develop the value proposition but to gain a deeper understanding of the overall context (including the competition) and to identify opportunities.

If there is one rule you must remember is to ask open-ended questions.

There is much more information you can extract from a person when you give them the chance to think about what they have to say to reply. For example, you could ask: "Do you use this type of machine in your lab?" Or you could ask "What machines do you use to measure this property?"

In the first one, you don't give any context, while in the second example, you put them in a concrete flow. They are trying to achieve something. There's a high likelihood they will go through all the steps they need to perform to use the machine. And, more importantly, there's a high likelihood they'll comment on current bottlenecks and actual pains they have.

The first interviews you perform are very different from the ones you can have once you've understood enough of the field. Circling back to the earliest ones can be a way of reinforcing your process.

The second rule is never assume you know better than your customer.

In an interview, your task is to ask the questions, not to tell them that they are doing something wrong. It is very different from asking: "How do you overcome this range of issues with that instrument?" than saying "You should not use that instrument because of those issues."

It's not just a matter of building a different type of rapport with the person, it is also about trying to understand their train of thought. You see the issues, but perhaps they don't. Or they are aware but they believe there is nothing they can do about it (at least not yet.)

The third is never put them in a position of power regarding your project.

When you interview someone, they probably know nothing about what you are building. How expensive it'll be, how big, how's it going to look. Never put someone you are interviewing in the position of giving an opinion on what you are building. They have no way of judging, and it'll completely throw off the balance of the discussion.

Pricing is a topic that often generates this situation. "Would you pay 100k€ for this device?" will probably lead to something like it's too expensive, you should make it for 30k€. On the other hand, you can ask: "How much did you pay for this alternative instrument you currently use?" If they were willing to pay that much for your (inferior) competition, then you are in a good position.

There are many examples of these rules. Remember, these interviews are not sales talks, but they are not far off. You can stay play your "scientist" card and discuss about a "project". Later on, once your product is ready, you'll have exactly the same chat, just that it'll end with: "Would you like to see a demo?"

The first few interviews

It is important to keep in mind that people have different roles, opinions, and backgrounds. You need to adapt the questions you ask depending on whether you talk to a professor, a technician, a PhD, or a postdoc. And, more importantly, you need not be afraid to dig deeper into topics you find interesting, even if you don't fully understand yet.

When I started talking to people, I didn't have a framework in mind. I just had friendly chats with collaborators. And that's one of the biggest advantages of scipreneurs while they are in the university: they have access to a lot of people who will gladly sit down and have a chat.

While I was a postdoc thinking about spinning out a project, one of the very first people with whom I had a chat was a virologist and a long-time collaborator in the group. I went to visit his lab and he showed me around. I still remember very distinctively that one of his biggest pains was that the review processes of his papers were much longer and stricter than those of his colleagues. As he was one of the few using a new range of tools in the field, there was a lot of skepticism and friction in the process.

Since we belonged to that category of devices (namely, single-particle measurements), and we had no power over the review process, we decided that perhaps virology would not be the best focus for us. At least not at that time and with limited resources.

The first few interviews have a lot of power over our decisions, and we must be careful about how we parse the information we receive. Of course, I talked to other virologists to confirm that single-particle measurements were going to have a slower adoption, but the chats were rather confirmatory than exploratory.

While we form our own opinions and views, a couple of highly opinionated people may dissuade us from the value of our approach.

Many cynics will simply state: "that will never work."

Pushing through those opinions while balancing the fact that they may still be true, requires time and patience. Perhaps it ends up being true that the value lies somewhere else, or perhaps it's just a bit more effort on our side to convince those early skeptics that they were, in fact, missing out on an opportunity.

Documenting interviews is fundamental all along the way. Some people (especially when the meeting happens online), ask to record conversations. That's fine provided that you distill the information into something that can be easily digested. Make bullet points of what was said, and what concerns were raised. Importantly, make notes of EVERY tool, be it alternative, competitor, or complementary, that is mentioned. Did they mention prices or delivery times?

It is incredibly hard to know since the first moment, what pieces of information are going to be the most relevant. Only after you've managed to build a context for yourself, you'll be able to dig back into the earlier talks and review what you may have missed.

Later Interviews

At some point, you will have a clearer understanding of the different fields in which you can move. There are always niches within topics and the clearer distinction you make, the more efficient your approach will be. You will see patterns that repeat. Normally, the first one that immediately pops up is that everyone uses the same instruments. They'll mention brands, versions, and complaints (or lack of). That's how you build a competitive landscape. But you can dig deeper.

You will also start noticing broader ambitions in different communities. You will find out who references others. The ones that are named more often are likely to be the Key Opinion Leaders you would like to have on your side, perhaps as early adopters.

Once you understand enough, and you think you have a compelling value proposition, later interviews will allow you to validate it.

And by validating, I mean that you will get people to express, in no uncertain terms, that they need what you are building.

I had exactly that behavior a couple of times. In the field where we operated, there were several competitors, some with a relatively long track record. Albeit they were robust solutions, they were giving parameters people didn't care about that much and were working around to get the values they really needed.

In my case, the difference was between measuring size and determining the concentration of particles in a sample.

While instruments were good at measuring size, none could measure concentration reliably (at least in the specific fields we were targeting).

While talking to a customer, I started drilling on his daily tasks. I started asking why he was doing some of the things he was doing. I could see him getting slowly uneasy, not because of my questions, but because he hadn't thought about his own way of working in a long time. At some point, he simply declared: "I don't care about size, I just want to know how many there are."

Bingo! That's what I wanted to hear. Now there was no reason for him not to be interested in my following comment: "That's exactly what our instrument does."