It's amazing to me what a skill it truly is to be able to talk to customers/users, and come out of those conversations with valuable/actionable insights.
As an engineer, it's _so_ easy to fall into the traps she mentions ("not really listening to your users and [...] building something you think people want", or becoming "more focused on the excitement of the technical challenge than your users").
Until I actually tried starting a business, I always scoffed at this advice -- "obviously I won't make those mistakes!" But I still find myself goofing up over and over. It's so attractive to think that "this one new feature will make all the difference, so I should probably just focus on coding rather than talking to users."
Has anyone found a particularly effective way to overcome this? Is it just a lack of discipline on my end? (Maybe I need to reread "The Mom Test" a few more times...)
As an engineer, it's _so_ easy to fall into the traps she mentions ("not really listening to your users and [...] building something you think people want", or becoming "more focused on the excitement of the technical challenge than your users").
Until I actually tried starting a business, I always scoffed at this advice -- "obviously I won't make those mistakes!" But I still find myself goofing up over and over. It's so attractive to think that "this one new feature will make all the difference, so I should probably just focus on coding rather than talking to users."
Has anyone found a particularly effective way to overcome this? Is it just a lack of discipline on my end? (Maybe I need to reread "The Mom Test" a few more times...)