Emmett Shire: How Twitch Talks with Users

Stanford course CS183B: How to start a startup . Started in 2012 under the leadership of Peter Thiel. In the fall of 2014, a new series of lectures by leading entrepreneurs and experts of Y Combinator took place:



As part of his lecture for the Stanford startup school, Emmett shared his thoughts on approaches to conducting interviews with users. He then answers the questions of the course participants.

Student 1: What are the typical mistakes startups make during the interview phase [with users]?

Emmett: The most common mistake is to show people their product. Should not be doing that. This is the same as telling them about a function. You need to find out what is already in their head, and not give them new information.

Another mistake is questions about the direction your favorite function is responsible for. If you want to add the possibility of subscription to your product, you do not need to go around and ask users: “Would you pay for such a subscription? Would you use this feature? ”

Another common mistake is that people do not speak with those with whom they need, but with those who are more accessible. Of course, it’s much easier to contact those users who are already members of your forum. You talk to users on the forum of your product because they are more accessible.

For weeks we searched for information about people before talking to them. We could not directly contact them, and spent a lot of time to solve this problem.

Otherwise, we would not have received the most accurate data. Almost everyone was flattered that we were interested in their opinions, so people willingly shared their thoughts with us. It played into our hands.

Student 2: Was it difficult to get the approval and consent of the rest of the company? You can say: “Since I’m in charge, you will do what I say,” but this is probably not the best option.

Emmett: This is a good question. If you come to the employees and say: “I talked with users. And I found out that we need to create this, ”then it will really be difficult, because people do not trust you [if you have no evidence].

On the other hand, the demonstration of the interview will have a magical effect on your colleagues. I recommend recording an interview. Then you do not have to take notes, which may interfere with the conversation a bit and prevent you from concentrating on the conversation. And then you can show this entry to colleagues.

Student 3: Since you mentioned the recording, have you tried to conduct an interview via Skype, and not by email?

Emmett: Of course, you should choose Skype if you can do without email, as emails are not interactive. The most interesting information follows the words: “Very interesting. Tell us more about this. ”

As soon as you utter this phrase, the other person will tell you something that you do not expect to hear. And after that, you will need to switch to detective mode: “Hmm, that's interesting. Could you tell us something else? ”

People do not like silence, so they will continue to speak to fill in the pause. The most important advantage of Skype interviews is that they are interactive. You can get a lot more information out of people. Email interviews are usually worthless.

Interviews in person or when chatting on Skype are easier to record. Just be sure to check whether the respondents object to the record. It is impolite to record without their consent, but if you conduct interviews with users, they themselves may want you to record.



Listener 3:What about the international market? You mentioned that you have many users in Korea.

Emmett: Entering the international market is a very difficult task. To this day, Twitch works much better in English-speaking countries than in the rest. And this is largely due to the fact that we communicate more with people in English-speaking countries and find out what they need. I can not say the same about other countries.

We tried to solve this problem by hiring people who spoke Korean so that they could make translations. We also tried to find “exemplary” users who spoke both English and Korean. But the problem is that you will not be able to find such ideal users, no matter how you try.

The fact that a person is fluent in English already means that he cannot be a representative of all people who do not speak English. This is a difficult task. And therefore, it is easier for companies to expand the market in their country. In fact, it is very difficult to talk with users from other countries.

Student 4: What communication channels did you use to reach them? Have you ever paid users for interviews?

Emmett: We contacted them through the site messaging system. Most websites have the ability to communicate with users. You can contact a user of another website through this messaging system by writing something like:

"Hi. I’ve watched your channel ... "or" I would like to ask a few questions about this site ... Do you mind if I type you in Skype? ".

We also found out where to meet these people. We approached them at various events, many of them attend the same events. We would not conduct interviews there, but we needed to get to know them, exchange business cards and stay in touch.

Usually we don’t pay people for interviews. If the person is not interested enough in solving the problem to help you, you probably have come to the wrong place. It didn’t happen to us that people refused to talk for free.

Student 4: What about feedback collection tools on the site?

Emmett:This is a very important issue. When it comes to a new product, you need to know whether it will be in demand or not. You can offer people your idea and look at their reaction. This is extremely important.

This way, you can find the mistakes that you made while creating the product before launching it, which is great. This will not indicate exactly what you need to create, but it will help eliminate defects in your product. Generally speaking, we did not receive feedback in this way.

I mean, all of this, of course, is good, and in many ways resembles a data-oriented approach. But this way you will find out why people refuse to use your product, instead of figuring out which problem you should actually solve. What is important for them [users] purely humanly?

This initial stage of an interview with users when starting a startup is crucial. This is what you should pay attention to. We did not conduct interviews in person, mainly by telephone or via Skype.

Student 5: Which of the groups of people leaving various reviews should I pay attention to first?

Emmett: Given the limited resources, we paid more attention to the users of our competitors. We knew that they were already interested in broadcasting and, in principle, were ready to do it.

It turns out that all we needed was to lure them, which is much easier than starting from scratch. We chose this approach because we needed quick victories. My game project on Justin.tv simply would not have had a chance without a 25% gain every month. And this meant that we needed to get as many people as possible in the shortest possible time. In general, it turned out that this is a good approach.



Student 6: Previously, the video game industry was decentralized, there was no such connection, cohesion, which is now. You said you originally talked to streamers. What has changed since then? For example, RIOT Games forbade its full-time e-sportsmen to broadcast the passage of games. Have you tried to take control of it somehow?

Emmett:This question concerns publishers of computer games who are important people in this field. No large company will pay attention to you while your startup is in its infancy. Which is both good and bad.

This means that you don’t need to talk to publishers because they are not interested in you. We tried, but none of them agreed to chat with us. But once, when we began to gain popularity in this area, they nevertheless agreed.

I really do not want to speak badly about game publishers, because you can understand them. When you are just one small startup among hundreds of other small startups, they don’t have time to talk to each of you. As soon as our company gained momentum, the role of game publishers increased for us.

If I were asked where we got the necessary information from, what kind of users Twitch is currently interviewing for interviews, I would definitely name computer game publishers among them. They became much more active in this area, not like three or four years ago. As a rule, we get the most useful interviews with users from people who are important to us.

Over time, these people are replaced. Those who helped you in the first six months will not be your users after three years. It is very important to continue talking with people. Of course, having conducted several interviews with users at the initial stage and having achieved some success, it is easier to stop interrogating new people. This is a sure way to create not so good and useful functions as those that you created earlier.

Listener 7:How can a user leave a positive review [on your product]?

Emmett: Leave a positive review? I want users to write what they really think. What are their real problems. To just chat, so to speak.

I want just to be told about my life. The more you learn about them as individuals, about the nature of their activities, the easier it is to understand why they want what they want. This is a particularly important issue. For an interview, I need a person who is ready to talk a lot, who will show me the whole picture as a whole. On the other hand, if you want to help someone during the interview, just talk. Chat about everything in a row.