Why is feedback crucial for your startup?

by Anna Magiera, Senior Partner, Startups & Venture Business

As a startup founder, you will be lucky enough to encounter people, who would give you feedback, during your journey. These are your customers, investors, mentors, and advisors. They will provide feedback on your product or service, business model, strategy, etc.

For some reason, entrepreneurs either forget about this valuable source of information or perceive it as criticism and behave accordingly: deny, oppose, belittle. From my experience, startup founders that are open to feedback are more successful.

Customers

Can you believe it? Among the top 20 reasons for startup failure, number 9 is ‘ignore customers.’ A startup needs to come up with products and solutions that customers need. Hence, getting feedback from users regularly shall be an essential part of your business routine.

Make sure that:

You have all the required processes in place: surveys, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, webinars, etc. Today everything is easily automated, so use one of the following tools for this purpose: SurveyMonkey, SurveySparrow, Google Forms, TypeForm, Zoho Survey, etc.

Your team members — business development, sales, customer service — are not simply selling or addressing claims but talking to customers, learning about their experiences, exceeding expectations. Also, accumulating and sharing important insights and tips with other colleagues.

Investors

It might sound a bit cliché, but sometimes feedback from investors is more valuable than money. Investors see the market and business opportunities from another perspective, on a larger scale. Thus, start pitching your startup to investors before you actually need funding. But also remember that investors are people, and they make mistakes. There are well-known cases when investors didn’t recognize successful startups at the early stages. Thus, not all feedback will be helpful. But be grateful for every question, comment, or remark.

Mentors and advisors

I would recommend every first-time startup founder to look for a mentor or/and advisor. These people must come from the industry, have extensive entrepreneurial experience and be ready to dedicate their time and energy to your startup and use their network to your benefit. Put down a list of people you believe will bring value to your startup and try to get in touch with them. You pitch to them in the same way you pitch to investors, and if you manage to sell your vision to them, they will get on board.

Keep in mind that feedback should come from different people with various backgrounds to be diverse and complete.

Have your inner compass but listen to those who want to help you succeed.