What we’ve learned from Interviewing Top UK Startups
Way back in July we had the idea to get out and interview some of the people behind great products. Since then we’ve completed six interviews that have all led to genuinely fascinating discussions over the industries in which the business operates, where the ideas for their solutions came from and their vision for future growth.
The fact we were so interested to hear these stories meant that we were sure other people would want to read them too. Each of the businesses we met with has been established to solve a key problem they’ve identified — or at the very least provide an alternative (improved) experience to the established players. But in this post, I want to focus on the individuals themselves.
When we kicked this project off, wehad no idea whether it would work or not. Zero, zilch, nada.
Not.
A.
Sausage.
And by ‘work’ I mean whether we’d actually even get to talk to anyone. What if no one was interested? What if people ignored us? What if people didn’t want to share their stories or didn’t see the project as worthwhile?
After all, it’s not like we’re TechCrunch! In contrast to large-scale media, we simply wanted to build a library of interviews with interesting people and businesses, and to share them with a like-minded community of innovators and product teams. This included our event attendees, our client base and anyone else in our wider community. This has been one big learning project.
Being a marketer, I was sure was going to put people off. Everyone hates marketers and marketing right? (Pipe down at the back marketing peers).
The driving objectives behind our marketing at Kyan in 2017 was really about contributing to conversations surrounding innovation, community-building with our events and sharing cool stories (bro) from both within Kyan and also from elsewhere that people genuinely wanted to hear / read / talk about.
This interview series was an opportunity to highlight great work going on in different sectors — both to provide a bit of a ‘behind the scenes’ look into some rapidly growing startups, but also to serve as inspiration and knowledge-sharing for anyone that works in either product development or innovation more broadly.
I’m really thankful to everyone that has taken the time to share their stories and for providing insights into their businesses. I’m so appreciative that these people took the time. I feel like as well as just learning a lot about their businesses, I picked up a lot more too.
In the spirit of sharing, here’s what we feel we picked up:
Stay Open
One of the things that has (in all honestly) surprised me is the openness and immediate sense of positivity that I’ve received from my interview subjects after I’ve explained the concept and why we’ve been doing this.
I expected people to have preconceptions of the project, and to see it as something they didn’t have time for. These are all busy people, after all. What actually happened though was that without exception, they all took the time to listen to what I was putting forward and why we were doing it… And then made a decision.
Maybe I’m over analysing… But I wonder if there’s a parallel you can draw here in terms of agility and in terms of being receptive to ideas and different ways of doing things… and the fact these people have all either founded or work in senior positions for innovative businesses.
Similarly, I’ve had so many interesting conversations because everyone I’ve talked to either in terms of their product offering or their role / discipline has offered insights and perspectives that I didn’t necessarily expect.
Stay Accountable
Something else that struck me as a common thread between interviewees was the degree to which they emphasised the accountability of their businesses. This didn’t just extend to the obvious stakeholders, but I felt after speaking to these people that they genuinely felt their business should (and would) be able to make a positive difference in people’s lives — above and beyond the service it provides.
From Monzo’s simple claim that the major goal is to build a bank that they would want their friends and family to use, to Olio being able to state that the food-sharing app has saved the CO2 equivalent of over a million car miles, to Habito wanting to transform a process that is for many, one of the most stressful experiences of their lives. A purpose beyond ‘just’ business is a powerful motivator and I can see how this would feed into success in launching and scaling a new product.
Stay Humble
The people I’ve interviewed are from organisations of varying sizes, and at different stages of growth — right from early-stage (less than 10 staff), to an organisation like Monzo employing circa 200 people and continuing to grow rapidly.
This sense of modesty manifested itself in a number of ways. The first is how everyone I talked to went out of their way to emphasise how important every single member of their team has been in their company growth and continues to be. Not a single person brought up their individual achievements or their specific role in the growth of the company — interesting considering these were pitched as interviews with them as individuals.
Stay Hungry
I think being humble is balanced with a clear sense of ambition in most of the people I’ve interviewed. Not in a brash, overconfident way, but all my interviewees conveyed a calm feeling of almost inevitability about their future growth and their desire to drive real change in their industry and achieve something big.
Stay Focused
A number of my interview subjects spent a significant amount of time emphasising how crucial user feedback, observations, and experience are in shaping the direction and development of their product. I often see a kind of mythology that surrounds startup founders and senior teams for their visionary qualities and their Steve Jobs-like ability to know what people wanted and needed better than they do themselves…
What seems to be closer to the truth is that whilst there is often a personal story or experience that provides the spark, it’s the acknowledgement that users’ actual needs and how successfully a solution solves them that is what really determines success.
Stay Away from Labels
In sourcing people to interview, my starting point was often based on sector or technology. What I quickly learned though was that these same labels that I was placing on these businesses often didn’t resonate with how they actually envisioned themselves.
The positioning was always framed as simply as possible in terms of a problem and solution — anything else is a complication unless it’s being communicated to a potential investor or an audience with a different perspective. What particular subset of a sector or industry they belonged in just didn’t seem particularly relevant to them.
Stay Community Focused
In a realisation that felt fairly self-referential in terms of how I like to communicate and work as a marketer — and fairly representative of this project itself… I’ve noted that without exception, successful startups beyond a certain stage of growth all have a truly passionate base of users, advocates, and fans.
I would speculate this is partly self-selecting (only the best solutions inspire passion in users) but also a result of the ways in which these businesses communicate with their customers / users. Simple, honest and upfront communication comes as a breath of fresh air to many accustomed to dealing with multinationals that can, at times, seem difficult to get simple information from. Even if something goes wrong, I think people appreciate honesty and clarity more than a heavily mediated and PR or marketing-driven message.
So there it is.
I think it’s important to always try and learn both professionally and personally from your experiences and these are my takeaways from interviewing some of the top UK startups.
If you’re interested in reading the interviews we’ve discussed in this post, you can find them here.
If you have an interesting story and you’re interested in potentially featuring in an upcoming interview, please get in touch here.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com .
