From Zero to $10M ARR: Helply's customer interview playbook

Week 3 of building in public, and there is already so much to cover. The beauty of building a startup from the ground up is that so many things happen on a weekly basis, which makes writing these newsletters a breeze. So, what’s been going on since we last spoke? We have begun interviewing people about [Helpy](). When starting a company, I believe securing your first customer interviews is priority number one. We’ve set ourselves a massive stretch goal of 500 interviews in the next three months. This serves 3 primary functions: - Dial in our ideal customer profile - Determine which features matter most - Gauge the general sentiment about the product we’re building ​ In short, these interviews validate and shape the product your building. Last week alone, we managed to conduct 20 interviews, which was incredible. In this issue of the Zero to $10M ARR newsletter, we’ll cover: - What we learned from these interviews. - My playbook for how I was able to organize these interviews so quickly - Our interview tech stack and tools we use to make this process as easy and quantifiable as possible. ​ Let’s dive in! 1. What we learned from these interviews. So, what went well and what could have gone better during these interviews? For starters: no interview is a bad interview. The purpose of getting your idea out there in the market is feedback. Bad feedback, good feedback—all of this goes into validating, shaping, and refining your product. That being said… Out of the 20 interviews conducted, here are the bright spots: - AI is a hot topic; most leaders are thinking about it as a main strategy. - Smaller companies are looking for à la carte AI/support offerings versus all-in-one expensive solutions like those offered by Zendesk (this is part of our larger strategy, which we’ll cover in future newsletters). ​ The not-so-good/learning components: One large SaaS company we spoke to was managing around 10,000 support tickets monthly and provided some critical feedback that differed from our smaller interviewees. Their feedback: - While Helpy’s vision of flexible AI solutions is appealing, they require more robust backend API integrations - The also need advanced support capabilities for tier two and tier three issues, which we currently do not offer. - They also said I'd never be able to compete with the big guns but I treated that as a win. You can read more about this here on [today's LinkedIn post.](=)​ ​ This kind of feedback is invaluable. 2.My playbook for how I was able to organize these interviews so quickly You might be wondering, how did we get people to interview? Most early-stage companies understand the importance of early-stage interviews with customers, but struggle to book them. So how did we go about landing so many interviews so quickly? My network. Believe it or not, over my last 10+ years of entrepreneurship, I have built an email list of over 150k subscribers. I’m fortunate that the majority of this list is interested in hearing what I am up to and what I am building next. Now, I know not everyone will have this luxury. So, what is my advice to new founders? Grind. Email DM, LinkedIn DM, phone call. That’s what I did at Groove, which I bootstrapped to $5M in ARR as a solo founder. You can't cheat the grind. It is a route every entrepreneur must take. Bonus tip: you’re just starting out, tap into your friends and family. You’d be shocked where this immediate network can lead. Trust me. 3. Our interview tech stack and tools I remember when first starting Groove, my customer interviews were hand-transcribed by me and then manually added into a Google spreadsheet. Not great. It took time, was not efficient, and was extremely hard to recap past interviews. Luckily, times have changed. These is so much great technology at our disposal this time around, and the process is like night and day. Here’s the exact playbook and tech stack we are using for customer interviews at Helpy: - Interviews are conducted via Riverside. ​ - We then have Riverside generate the transcript. ​ - Load the transcript into ChatGPT to distill and summarize the primary insights. This system not only helps us organize feedback but also ensures we can distill and act on the insights gathered efficiently. ​ The exact prompt we use is as follows: ”Summarize the following: {insert transcript}” ​​ That’s it. ​ - These takeaways are then integrated directly into our CRM. ​ - This integration streamlines our follow-up process and provides us with a clear visual representation of our interviewees’ standings through a Kanban board. ​ - We then categorize every interviewee into one of three groups: - Good fit - Not a good fit - Follow-up needed ​ If you want to build a great business, early customer interviews are mission critical. We are well on our way to gathering some really great data. If you are currently building a business, make sure you prioritize this. Trust me, it will pay dividends. And if you are stuck on where to start, hopefully the information in this newsletter can provide a foundation to work with. Until next week… Alex CEO & Founder, [Groove](=) & [Helply]()​ P.S. I’ll also be posting on LinkedIn seven days a week, 365 days a year. I’d love to hear your feedback on the new newsletter in the comments of my latest post. Check out [today's LinkedIn post where I break down the ugliest customer interview we've had at Helply to date]() (and how I use it to make Helply a stronger business). Let me know what you think. I read and reply to every comment. P.P.S If you’d like to learn more about my strategy for building Helply in public, [check out my Week 3 interview with Ben Wright](=) on Youtube. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Don't want to hear from us? You can [unsubscribe here](.