Phil Brooks, Entrepreneur in Residence with the Innovation Institute will be hosting several interviews with up & coming Pitt entrepreneurs over the next several months. Subscribe to our blog to learn first-hand from their experiences. on the right side of this page.
Today we welcome Mahender Mandala to the University of Pittsburgh’s Innovation Institute. Mahender is a doctoral candidate with the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Rehabilitation Science and Technology at Bakery Square.
Mahender recently completed a National Science Foundation grant-funded program called the I-Corps for Learning, which is designed to accelerate innovations in learning that are both scalable and sustainable. A key part of this program is Customer Discovery.
Q. What is your innovation?
A. We are working on a web-based tool that allows for easy implementation of design project reviews using peerAGE [product name] in a class. This also provides students a central location to review, track and work on design projects. We believe our tool is going to revolutionize the typical engineering classroom creating additional avenues for students to learn. In addition, it will provide the class administrators with the capacity to run and manage these classes in an engaging fashion.
Q. Mahender, how would you describe customer discovery after conducting more than 100 interviews during I-Corps for Learning?
A. I think the keyword there is discovery. You are trying to uncover interesting insights and experiences. Some pieces of information that may seem unimportant now – as you interview more and more people – you find a larger trend. So it was important for me to reexamine what each of the customers was saying. Listening is important, but only practice made me able to hear what a customer is NOT saying and that often proved to be even more important to me.
Q. Did your innovation evolve as a result of conducting customer discovery?
A. Oh, absolutely! It evolved subtly, but it did evolve.
Q. In what ways?
A. When we started the program, we had a vague idea of what the sustainability for our tool was. We thought we had to be successful in each and every customer segment that we could potentially participate in. We had several customer segments where we thought our one tool could fit and work, but as we went through these 100 interviews we quickly found out that several of these segments required a lot more resources and a lot more energy from our side to succeed. So we started focusing on those one or two segments that really were within our grasp in the next six months or one year. So it did help us. Made us focus our innovation on those few customer segments that were a sure shot to succeed.
Q. Conducting a 100 interviews in seven weeks, seems very challenging. What techniques did you use to get meetings with that many people?
A. I still cannot believe we finished those interviews in such a short period of time. We did actually contact over 200 people to get the 100 interviews. A lot more rejected us than accepted our request for interviews. We began with friends and family, and connections we already knew for the initial 10 – 20 interviews. Then we began focusing on organizations we foresaw as potential customers. Then tried to identify additional people through cold calling and sending emails. Once we had the first 30 or 40 interviews done, it got a little easier. I constantly kept an eye on where the recommendations were concentrated and explored those places to find others. We took the names of people they suggested we speak with. I think this is very important and helped us snowball into the final group of interviewees. It also helped that we had extremely proactive team members.
Q. The NSF program emphasizes the importance of conducting face-to-face interviews? Did you find more value with these interviews?
A. Definitely. It’s a big difference face-to-face versus any other way. Most of these interviews are voluntary – meaning, if you bore someone, their feedback will not be high quality. In person meetings provide you with a lot more information, like body language, that helps you tailor your next question, or share something engaging based on how they answered the last question. Visiting your interviewee in their usual workplace, helps you gauge their personality – look at the books in their office, what widgets do they have, looking at their workspace…it helps form a mental image and you can certainly make the interview an enjoyable conversation.
Q. What questions did you ask?
A. A lot of my questions ended or followed up with WHY? I asked them to briefly describe their day-to-day role (their roles may differ from their title). I focused on questions that excited both the interviewee and me. It helped get good insights – if the interviewee doesn’t want to talk about something, unless you see a hidden gem, there is often not much you can extract. I always ended with, what question should I have asked you, given your experience, role, etc.
Q. What was your most interesting interview?
A. There were several. The most interesting interview was with a Professor (who will remain unnamed) who seemed like a poster customer for my tool – he agreed and positively responded to several questions. We spoke with great enthusiasm and freely. He gave me a lot of feedback on what he thought would and would not work with our tool. When I asked him if he would try our tool, or implement it in the class – he said NO. I was taken aback initially, but I probed and asked, what if it’s free? He said NO again. I then asked, why? He said he is happy with his current workflow – he didn’t care much to change – and he finds learning a new tool challenging and the current help/support that software tools offer are not customized to his needs. He finds typical software support horrible. He felt to use a new software tool he would have to practically have someone sit with him so he could use it. That gave us great insight into our primary customer segment and the need for strong customer support (e.g., workshops, conferences, professional development), but also a little disheartening.
Q. Did you feel that participating in the Innovation Institute’s 1st Gear program gave you a head start going into I-Corps?
A. Yes! We were probably one of the few teams who were able ramp up to the interviews and BMC [Business Model Canvas] quickly. This helped us focus on items on the BMC we knew little about and these quick iterations also helped us get feedback from the teaching team quicker – so we spent fewer weeks figuring what we wanted and more on doing what we should.
Q. What question should I have asked you?
A. This is a great way to finish all of your interviews. I learned so much more from everyone when I asked them that question. Now that you asked me that question, I realize what a predicament my interviewees were in at this point. The question I believe you should have asked is, “What do you do when someone turns you down for an interview or everything goes wrong with what you planned, how do you carry yourself?” My answer is, an interview doesn’t have to be an interview it can be a conversation. There is always something you can learn from them or perhaps who to talk to next.
Do you have an innovation that could benefit from customer discovery and the development of a sound business model? If so, Pitt Venture’s 1st Gear program can help. Learn how today!