Remember when you heard that Jay-Z and Beyonce had named their child Blue Ivy? And you thought "Wow, that is pretentious and weird."
But then, remember when you met Jay-Z backstage at the Grammy awards, you didn't mention how stupid you thought it was? Or at least, you wouldn't have mentioned it, had you met him backstage.
Yeah, so that's what people are doing - or rather not doing - when it comes to your startup. They're being polite. And their politeness is killing you.
I had this problem when our company started out as a subscription service for baby clothes. We had a major, glaring flaw in our business model but all the moms we talked to were saying "Wow, that's such a great idea! I hate the waste of buying baby clothes for a kid who grows so quickly--I would love to use a 'Netflix for baby clothes.'"
A few of the braver ones slipped in mild comments like "Unfortunately, my baby spits up too much for me to possibly subscribe." or "I'm too unorganized to keep track of what belongs to you and what belongs to me." At the time, I thought I was explaning those concerns away and didn't pay enough attention to them.
When the market finally forced me to pay attention (because the company was getting so little traction), I started to listen and realized those mild and polite comments underscored a fundamental flaw to our business model that was keeping 99.9% of moms who heard about us from signing up for our service.
We made the switch from renting high quality baby and kids' clothes to selling them outright, and rebranded the company as Moxie Jean.
And the worst part, for me, was that after we pivoted our business model (which you can read about here) tons of moms I knew started confessing that they and their friends had never really liked the old model. It made me want to bang my head against the wall. "Why didn't you SAY something?" When I look back, a few brave ones tried (although I wasn't listening) but I can understand why many didn't: In short, they were just being polite. And their politeness almost killed me.
There are two related lessons here for every startup.
1) Criticism is a precious gift. Most people take the path of least resistence and will not put in the effort to disagree with you and/or risk offending you. It's easier to just smile and act like you think every startup is a brilliant idea. So if someone offers you a tiny glimmer of objection, don't try to explain it away and "answer" their objection. See if you can get them to tell you more about what they are reacting to, why, and what they think would be better. If they are wiling to engage with you, be incredibly thankful. These people are few and far between.
2) Be indirect to get honest feedback. If Jay-Z asks you if you like the name "Blue Ivy," social norms about politeness will kick in and you'll probably tell him how cool and different it is. As a physchological side effect of that politeness and your new affinity and budding relationship with Jay-Z, I bet you'll even start to believe it (you'll be wrong). But if some random girl at a party asks you what you think, you'll probably tell her the truth.
Here's the deal: You are Jay-Z and you have named your child Blue Ivy. Many people dislike it or at least have serious problems with it but they are too polite to tell you.
You may think you've done "market research" and tons of people have told you how awesome your idea is. But in reality, this feedback is meaningless. You (meaning YOU, the founder, the CEO, the person deeply committed to the idea) can't ask people directly for feedback.
Get a seemingly neutral party to ask for it, to relieve the person providing feedback of the discomfort associated with being honest and critical. It will make all the difference in their responses. What's a neutral-third party? Use an intern. Use the internet. Use "hypothetical situations" instead of telling them you already launched an actual company. (People are more likely to react honestly to the baby's name before the baby is born. Once the birth certificate is dry, they figure it's a done deal and it's all smiles and coos.)
If you do this, you may have a few excruciating weeks or even months as the glaring flaws and weaknesses of your company or your business model are made evident (Believe me, those weeks are truly awful). But if you don't do it, you'll have many more weeks and months of struggle, frustration and wasted effort pursuing a flawed idea that really just needs a few tweeks to take off.
