Gaurav Agarwal, LensBricks , @agarwal__gaurav Knowing your customers is difficult, and finding them can be an expensive endeavor. Gaurav Agarwal has learned a few easy, low cost tricks to help startups build a quick understanding of customers and market. His techniques leverage existing web analytics tools that are available to all. Aimed to help startups get more with less, when working in a resource-constrained environment.

1. Customer dev power-ups
#HackCustomerDev
Lean Start up Conference 2015
#LeanStartup
#HackCustomerDev

2. How well do you know your
Customer ?
“No.1 reason for failure, cited by 42% of polled startups ”
- C.B.Insights
#HackCustomerDev

3. Questions facing you ?
Who ..
are interested in your product ?
are your power users ?
How ..
do you reach them ?
do you collect feedback at scale ?
What ..
are your customer’s preferences ?
are features do they hate / demand ?
#HackCustomerDev

4. Customer dev is hard
#HackCustomerDev
Time
Money
$
Resources

5. Hacking your early research
Online data + Analytics + Creativity = Preliminary Market Insight !
#HackCustomerDev

6. Hacking customer development
User data ..
Time spent online: 21hrs/week
Unbiased ..
Passive, honest, from right users
#HackCustomerDev

7. Methodology
Where
are your
users
Online
Can you
Mine
the info
manually
#HackCustomerDev
Loop
the info
mining
,scrape
Process
the data
and
Analyse

8. Hacks & DIY Power-ups
for tech startups, small businesses, even individuals..
#HackCustomerDev

9. CaseStudy - LensBricks
Exploring home monitoring..
Smart cameras
for consumers
#HackCustomerDev
Who are the current buyers ?
What are the main use cases ?
Where are the gaps ?

10. Methodology
#HackCustomerDev
Identify model
competitors
Where can you
find their users
Online Mine
Loop
Analyse

11. Who buys home monitoring/security ?
#HackCustomerDev
Scrape & cluster
profile data

12. Who buys home monitoring/security ?
#HackCustomerDev
53% Male
78% married | 29% parents
$38k avg income pa ( individual )
Construction professionals, Realtors,
Members of military, consultants & IT
professionals
Affiliations to : Apple store, Verizon, Best Buy,
Home Depo and Radio shack
53-70% Male
90+% Married | 25-47% are Parents.
$57k - $68k avg income pa (individual )
Entrepreneurs , Senior Managers ,
Sales/Marketing Managers,
focus on Tech & Travel
Affiliations to : Apple Store, Best Buy, Verizon
Store, Roku and Sprint Store

13. What are the main use cases ?
#HackCustomerDev
Wrote script to
mine data
Analysed using
excel
No coding method:
Use kimono labs +
wordCloud

14. What are the main use cases ?
#HackCustomerDev
Summary - 1900 reviews:
(as of Nov 2014)
Security usage ~40%
Baby/Child monitoring ~26%
Pet monitoring ~22%
Miscellaneous ~12%
( lawn, elderly )

15. What are the gaps ?
#HackCustomerDev
Wrote script to
scrape data
Analysed using
excel
No coding alternate:
Use kimono labs +
wordCloud

16. What are the gaps ?
#HackCustomerDev
Write code to scrape
OR Analysis in excel

17. What are the gaps ?
#HackCustomerDev
Pros:
Easy setup ~ 90%
HD video quality ~75%
Night vision ~40%
(results are based on data mined as of Dec 2014)
Cons:
Monthly subscription ~70%
False alerts ~55%
Wifi/Connectivity ~30%

18. CaseStudy - LearnLingo
Who could potentially buy ?
How to reach potential buyers ?
Marketplace to
learn language
while you travel
#HackCustomerDev

19. Who could potentially buy ?
#HackCustomerDev
tweets about
“learning language”
“learning chinese”
…..

20. Who could potentially buy ?
#HackCustomerDev
Engage personally
(learn & feedback)
Targeted marketing
(A/B test, sell)
+
tweets about
“learn language”
add to google
spreadsheet

21. CaseStudy – Igloo
How to reach out to potential
customers quickly ?
Service provider
to real estate
agencies
#HackCustomerDev

22. How to reach potential buyers ?
#HackCustomerDev
where would
agencies be
listed ?
how to
download
their details
reach them
at scale ?

23. CaseStudy – Megha
How to survey other developers
on their preferences & practices ?
Created software to be
used by biometrics
developers
#HackCustomerDev

24. Who to reach potential users?
#HackCustomerDev
Wrote script to
automate

25. How can you implement ?
#HackCustomerDev

26. How can you implement ?
Find
Online
Mine
manually
#HackCustomerDev
Loop Analyse
- Use DIY tools
- Code
Write/use code
Get code written
- Non coding
Mturk, Upwork
- Use DIY tools
Existing tools
Excel addins
- Code
Write/use code
Get code written
- Just look !

27. List of tools
#HackCustomerDev
Demographics Pro
Followermonk
Simplymeasure
Twittersheep
Hootsuite
Web Scraping
KimonoLabs
Import.io
Fminer
ScraperWiki
Social Media Appstore
AppAnnie
MoApp
AppFigures
IFTTT

28. Limitations
#HackCustomerDev
“ With great power,
comes great responsibility ! ”
Just Hacks
and not full blown
solution
Mislead
Bad experiment
design
Private data
Be respectful !

29. Hope that was helpful !
#HackCustomerDev
Email: gaurav@attlabs.com
Twitter: @agarwal__gaurav
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gauravragarwal
Need any help, please reach out !

30. Hands on exercise
#HackCustomerDev
Lets scrape amazon.com for product reviews ..
Its easier than you think ..

31. Kimono labs + Amazon + WordClouds
#HackCustomerDev
Step1: Install Kimono Labs
1) Switch to chrome browser
2) Go to https://www.kimonolabs.com/
3) Click Sign-up & create an account
4) Click on the kimono labs icon on the center of the page. It says “click
to install”
5) Add/Install the chrome extension

32. Kimono labs + Amazon + WordClouds
#HackCustomerDev
Step2: Go to product review page on Amazon
1) Go to amazon.com
2) Search for you product and go to the product page
3) Scroll to the bottom and click on “See all 2362 customer reviews”

33. Kimono labs + Amazon + WordClouds
#HackCustomerDev
Step3: Scrape using Kimono Labs
1) Click on kimono labs chrome extension, wait for it to load
2) A pop up appears, familiarise yourself with the controls
3) Selecting “Title” of review:
• Click on title of any review – yellow box should appear. Now click on title of another review .
You should see “Title” of all the reviews selected.
3) On the kimono lab tool bar, click on the plus sign.
4) Selecting “Description” of review:
• Click on description of any review – yellow box should appear. Now click on description of
another review.

34. Kimono labs + Amazon + WordClouds
#HackCustomerDev
Step3: Scrape using Kimono Labs
5) Selecting “Number of stars” of review:
• Click on the “number” besides “star” for any review – yellow box should appear. Now click on
same entity for another review.
6) On the kimono lab tool bar, click on “open book sign”
7) Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “4” in pagination number tab

35. Kimono labs + Amazon + WordClouds
#HackCustomerDev
Step4: Downloading the data
1) Provide your login details
2) Provide a name for your API
Change “5 pages maz” to “25 pages”
3) Click on “create API”
4) Click on the link for your API
5) Let the crawl complete if its in progress
6) Click on “Data Preview” tab
7) Click on “csv” and then “Download” button on the right to get the data

36. Kimono labs + Amazon + WordClouds
#HackCustomerDev
Step5: Make sense of data
1) Open the .csv file in excel
2) If you are an excel/scripting ninja, you can do text analysis, sentiment analysis, etc
3) For others, lets use an online text analysis tool
4) Go to “worditout.com” or “tagul.com”
5) From the excel sheet, copy the title or description column and paste it on the tool
6) Generate word cloud
7) Remove unnecessary words from wordlist like “dropcam” “pro” “camera” to leave only the
adjectives/verb