Day Eleven: Picking Up The Phone

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"AirBnB launched and a year after we launched, I think we had 100 people/day visiting our website and we had like 2 bookings.” - Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO

Today, I started the real step one of starting any company. I spent all day on the phone calling people who could be future customers and future competitors. Posing questions that helped me to best understand the current market and identify products that would be helpful to them.

I was shocked my how much information people were willing to provide me on the phone. " Hi, I am a college student working on a business school project. Can I ask you a few questions?" The simple fact that I am a college student opened a lot of people's mind to want to help me out. Awesome!

We have learned from people like Brian Chesky the Airbnb CEO how important is it to get as close as you can to your customers. He explains at Airbnb “We would go door to door in NYC, or Denver where the DNC was, literally meeting with, staying with and living with our users". Although, I am not able to crash on the couch of my customers, I am trying to find unique ways to completely understand my customers.

It's easy to want to skip the hard steps and go straight to fun stuff like creating a logo. Without knowing who your customer is there is no point because everything you create from start to end should be for them. If you don't know them as a person how are you going to be to do that?

Phone calls and reading every blog about vacation home rentals is my method of understanding who my target customer will be. The one on one conversation through phone calls have been the most insightful and have helped me to create the best product for my customer.

Cheers,

Courteney