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In the realm of cold calling / emailing, 1% conversion is actually pretty normal. 2-5% would be unusually good. I would stick with what you're doing and don't lose faith!

If you want to try different strategies in parallel, I work in sales for a healthcare SaaS and while my product is results/outcomes oriented, I have much better luck talking to people about RESULTS they want to achieve vs. PROBLEMS they want to solve. At least now we're getting excited about something good vs. something they are already sick of talking about, or know they can't fix.

Some of the pains in healthcare are so structurally embedded in the industry, products purporting to relieve those pains are so plentiful, and ACTUAL pain relieving results are so few and far between, that messages looking for honest input on major pains that doctors experience is too clear of a dogwhistle for "I'm going to try to sell you a solution that doesn't work" and will be ignored.

Many doctors, for example, are still nursing wounds caused by the shift to EMR from paper- pretty much every vendor in that space promises an "easy migration" and the reality is that porting to EMR or switching vendors is a massive massive pain in the ass. ANY solution for a pain, or for amplifying/increasing a beneficial outcome, comes at not only a financial cost, but (perhaps more importantly) an opportunity cost associated with the time investment. Time = patients, patients = reimbursement, reimbursement = money.

Edit: Another thing that works for me is seeding the conversation with something like, "Something I hear from a lot of providers in [specialty] is they have a problem with [problem], or they want to do more [thing]. Is that true in your practice?"

Reviewing my numbers I would say it seems closer to 0.5% at this point.

You made good points for the stage that you're in, i.e. you already have a solution that you can sort of pitch upfront (even seeding the conversation is a version of that). I'm at the point where I can't/don't want to bias them with the slightest hint of what I'm solving because it will taint their response. That makes it quite hard!

The last conversational approach is very practical because it provides a concrete example.

>I'm pretty clear I'm just looking to learn/listen and not pitch.

They have no reason to trust you. I would think you're just looking for an angle to sell me on no matter what you say.

You might try attending/crashing medical conferences in the area. You could also talk to folks on the periphery of the healthcare industry to look for opportunities.

One that I experienced personally is the difficulty in matching a specific person at a specific point in their treatment to applicable clinical trials. Particularly with cancer where there are so many inclusion/exclusion criteria to consider. The terminology is very dense and not always clear. Then you reach out to the PI and find that the window is even smaller than it appeared at first.

You hit the nail on the head on BOTH points.

They do not trust me (why would they) and they think it's a sales tactic. I couldn't be purer in my intentions, but people are on the defensive.

And your pain point is actually one I've heard firsthand. Got a few ideas and connections in this area.

Whether you can see this POV or not, I'd consider that from their perspective you are trying to sell them something. You are trying to sell them on the notion that they should give their time to you for free and they should give you insight to start a company that would be lucrative for yourself. The value trade is actually even less equal than being sold something.

I'm not trying to be rude or insulting, but thinking you have pure intentions doesn't change this.

Some people might have the time or interest in the hope that you can one day make their work easier. So overall I understand why you are asking this question and I'm sure the advice people have given here will help you make some stronger connections to people in this cohort.

You are asking for them to spend a considerabe amount of their time on you. If you wrote me a super short mesage about my field (not medicine), I might feel too that this will be 30-60 minutes of my time wasted on a likely sales call.

On the other hand, if you write me a longer message, explaining your background and position, give me all the background info, and let me answer via email, I might be more inclined to help, assuming you demonstrate that you at least have some understanding of the field.

Alternatively, you could offer to pay people for their time, which is not something sales people typically do.

Beyond trust - they have nothing to gain. You learn from the interview. They get...what exactly?

Could you buy rounds at a bar near a hospital?

If you follow Steve Blank's approach, the ideal thing to do is start with "friendly first contacts" - that is, people you actually know personally and/or people who you are referred to by people you know personally. Then, once you get even a few "friendly first contact" meetings, you ask those people to refer you to their contacts, and so on in turn.

Note that this stuff is never as easy as it sounds on paper, but if you put enough effort in, it eventually works (in my experience anyway).

Also note that even if you're not pitching a product for sale (yet) asking people for their time for an interview is still an ask. Ideally you'd like to be able to offer to compensate people for their time somehow. I don't mean paying them cash or anything, but think about how to structure your invitations in such a way as to communicate that you're offering them something in return for their time. That "something" might be "an early peek at a revolutionary new technology for ABC" or whatever you can think of that is a way of giving some value to them. Be creative.

Also, it's not always the easiest thing to go in asking people "what are your pain points" in an extremely open-ended way. You might find that it's easier to start with a hypothesis about a possible pain point, and pitch things in terms of "We've noticed that firms like yours often have to deal with problem $FOOBAR. To that end, we're developing a novel solution for $FOOBAR, and we'd love a few minutes of your time (no sales pitch!) to talk about how $FOOBAR and related problems affect you. In return for a 30 minute interview, we'll offer you $SOMETHING".

I'll check Steve Blank out (didn't know him), but I've been trying to follow this technique ad-hoc. Like you said, easier said than done. Even friendly people aren't very responsive to requests for intros. In the few interviews I did I made a point to ask for intros at the end and although they say "sure", it's crickets afterwards.

This is a humbling realization of what salespeople are up against. We all love to hate on these guys but man... What a hustle and you need armor-like skin and insane optimism and persistence.

> In the few interviews I did I made a point to ask for intros at the end and although they say "sure", it's crickets afterwards.

Are you doing these in person or virtually? If you're doing it in person, you're already at the end and have the data you're looking for from the person you're talking with. "Do you know any other people I should talk to?" "Yeah" "Ok, could I just write their names down right now here?"

see this is why "startup" is so much harder than running a "business"

a "business" already works on what is built or established, refining processes to branch off beaten paths to sales/marketing

a "startup" operates with too many unknowns for the average person, 99% failure means only 1% of the people figure out the unknowns to become a "business"

I just don't understand why people just default to "startup". You should be focused on running a business and make a 15 cents out of a dollar spent, not spend a dollar to make 15 cents in hopes that someone will "buy you out" or you "ipo"

such are pipe dreams

While the hustle is admirable, I think you could use more creativity on the outreach plan. Doctors are likely one of the most harried professions in the world. Cold emails to these folks are not going to work well.

You have to find a way to network.

Look at how pharma reps do it. Attractive people, coming into the office and bring lunch.

Where can you put yourself in a spot to meet and talk to a high percentage of doctors. My first thought is a golf course. Is there a way in that way?

Do you volunteer at a hospital on weekends?

Another tip is for anyone you talk to, ask for introductions. Who else has this problem?? I work in healthcare (not a doctor). Not sure if I can help, but happy to chat if you dm me.

Volunteer at a hospital seems like an amazing win-win. While doing something useful for society they can get to meet potential customers (doctors). Do you know of any resources that talk about such creative outreaches done by different entrepreneurs. I would love to read something like this.

One of our friends is a retired pharma rep. He made the majority of his connections through networking at conferences. During their workdays, doctors are typically over-worked and unwilling to be distracted.

Same retired pharma rep now volunteers at a major hospital a couple of days a week - most of his interaction is with patients - staff are too busy and volunteers provide the necessary welfare connections, especially with elderly and lonely patients.

>I'm pretty clear I'm just looking to learn

put another way, you're asking people to take some of their time to teach you. I'm assuming that if you were offering compensation for this time you'd have mentioned it.

getting a 1% interview rate for an ask like that is exceptional. especially considering the people you're asking are known for being extremely busy, and you're asking from outside their industry.

I think your question is really: "how do I find people to interview?"

First, find out where your prospects actually spend time. LinkedIn is garbage for a lot of industries. Most doctors don't change jobs much or building "personal brands", so they're not scanning LinkedIn often. Reddit can also be often a better community.

Second, don't cold message people. Put out HELPFUL (not clickbait) content. It can be as simple as a question ("hey, I'm wondering how people solve X?"). Let the community come to you. Then follow up with the people that engaged with your content. They've shown an interest in your topic AND a willingness to engage.

At the end of every call, ask two questions: can you follow up with them with further questions and is there anyone they can think of that would be helpful to learn more? For that second question ask them, IN THE CALL, to write an intro email/message connecting you. Social validation is critical.

Finally, actually follow up. 1-4 weeks later message an update, thank them for their perspective and connection, and again ask if there's anyone they can think of to learn more from.

I like your suggestion and it sounds like it would work great for certain cohorts, but not so sure about docs. I can see employing this tactic in a conference though. But that's more of a phase 2 thing when you already have a handful of ideas.

Sounds good in theory but awful in practice. Nobody will connect with you if you ask an open question in public. Like what are the chances a doctor will respond back to a question you post on LinkedIn or even Reddit?

No. Cold call.

Don't. Watch them do their work, or let them describe their work.

From my coaching practice, people are not very good identifying there real pain point. My back hurts, but my back isn't broken, I just sit too much.

How's he going to watch doctors do their work? Have you ever seen vendors sit in on your appointments?

Personally not in appointments, but I have seen vendors observe doctors in hospitals. But you can always role play for example.

A pain point I noticed recently just visiting a hospital as a patient was not being able to find stuff! ECG pad thingies in this case. But they handled it so jovailly maybe it was a positive lol for a dreary night shift.

It's something I used to do internally at my previous employer, and I know it's very useful. In this case I would have to convince a doc to let me follow them around and that's an immense ask. It's also going to miss systemic, intangible issues that are not task related. It's a great thing to do for an already-established product.

You must have a doctor somewhere in your network 1 degree of separation away. Get a friend to ask for a favor to invite the doctor to a meal at a nice place, your treat. Be up front about your intent. At the right time, pitch to the doctor the idea of interacting on the job with doctor and/or staff. And don't promise the doctor any equity. Maybe free access to the product.

Doctors have to be very careful with this type of request. If they allow an unrelated third-party to view protected health information, even inadvertently, then they could be punished for a HIPAA violation. Most well-managed healthcare provider organizations would outright prohibit this unless there is a business associate agreement in place.

Have you considered offering them something for their time? Something as simple as a gift card to a coffee shop, so you can have virtual coffee and chat about their pain points?

I know you don't want to sounds sales-y, and there are ways to offer this without sounding like a salesperson. Just an idea

And be upfront about it - tell them that you're in the research phase and you're just trying to gather information, and it's not a sales call.

Exactly this. People's time is money; pay them what their time is worth.

This has the side effect of incentivizing bullshit submissions. This may work better for something that is rigid, like answering some multiple choice questions.

I do not want to incentivize people to give me BS feedback just to get paid. If they need money or a gift to tell me about their pain point, it's not a pain point.

Why should they spend their time talking to you though? You're asking busy people to help you come up with a business idea for free.

> If they need money or a gift to tell me about their pain point, it's not a pain point.

This just doesn't follow. There are issues I face, but still have no incentive to spend time explaining them to you.

"Kvetch and eat: aspiring entrepreneur wants to make practicing medicine easier. Will buy steak dinner if you complain about things that drive you nuts about practicing medicine. Side effects may include catharsis and hope for the future."

If you phrase it that way, it sounds like win-win. Free dinner AND I get to complain with no social downsides!

Love this ^^

Yeah the coffee was just an idea to plant the seed that you value their time and feedback. It can be a steak dinner / massage to unwind from all the pain they experience around "X", etc.

Be careful how you position this so it does not come out as "paying for their time" and more like you value their time, this way you can weed out those that just want the incentive

Do you think doctors will care about coffee vouchers or will they correctly think it’s weird and patronising? Cold calling is a gift solicitation. Making it transactional from the start is mistaken.

I'd contact the leaders of professional or interest groups related to your domain and ask if they can recommend some members who might be interested. If you contact that person in a respectful and professional way, they'll feel slightly more obliged not to dismiss you immediately, because they're acting in a semi-official capacity. And if you get through to them, they can pass you on to members who will take you more seriously because you come with the imprimatur of someone they know.

[Before, during, and after the session you treat them well, don't waste their time, thank them, etc., which hopefully goes without saying]

Then when you're done with each interview, you ask the participant "hey, this was so great, can you recommend anybody else I should talk to?"

To that last sentence, I often used to add "... I'm looking for the most outspoken, opinionated expert you know, the person with no filter, who just tells it like it is". Chances are they know a person like that, and that person immediately leapt to their mind. That's who you really want to talk to anyway, the person who will tell you exactly what is wrong with everything out there.

In terms of asking people about pain points, the best approach I've used is to get them to list their pain points, then ask them to stack rank that list. If applicable, ask them how much they'd pay for a product that solved each of those problems, or just the top n. You want to know whether they're just brainstorming minor quibbles, or if there is actually an opportunity there.

If you are in the US, doctor's offices are typically small businesses that function different from hospitals. When I was in insurance, doctor's offices tended to be less savvy about HIPAA.

They became doctors to practice medicine. Most likely, their pain points have to do with all the non-medical parts of running a small business, including staying in compliance with regulations like HIPAA.

Engaging busy professionals, like doctors, is very challenging, especially when your value proposition is unclear. Get clear on what the value of them connecting with you is. If what you're offering isn't compelling, don't be surprised when even friendly connections don't bite. Don't be discouraged, instead learn from it and figure out what you can provide that they find value in.

As others have said, you'd likely have more success leveraging your existing network or attending medical conferences, which may lend themselves more naturally to having these types of conversations (you're right that they're expensive though!).

All things considered, I think a 25% connection rate and a 1% interview rate is great.

Yeah I'm in the toughest phase of idea extraction. Which is: hey I want to talk to you but I have nothing to say, YOU do the talking. That's CRAZY hard, especially on LinkedIn (the low hanging fruit I admit). I already extracted a few ideas from motivated docs or 1st/2nd degree real-life connections, and I could move forward with those on a separate front. But what I thought was going to take me 2 hours a day is actually taking the whole damn day, every day.

I had this doc tell me in the most condescending way possible that she could make good bank if she charged my kind for all the free advice she's giving out... And denied me the advice until I demonstrated my worth. And then her advice was a bunch of shitty platitudes.

I had this psychologist basically suggest I write an essay about why docs are driving change in healthcare. I obliged.

On the other hand I had a wonderful doc out of SC who straight up shared his screen with me, unprompted, to show me his problem. This is the kind of guy that gives me hope.

Have good experience here.

Doctors are particularly difficult group to get a hold of cold for somewhat obvious reasons (overworked, value privacy, etc).

The most effective approach I've seen is to focus on a niche type of medicine/field and attend one of the smaller conferences. Especially if you can find one that's less academic and more industry-oriented.

That's where you'll find the doctors who actively are interested in startups and getting into new things.

Sometimes these conferences will also have built-in networking functions to help facilitate.

Strongly recommend reading Mom Test: https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-...

You might have incorrect expectations - if you are scraping contact info from LinkedIn and getting any responses at all, you are doing well. 25% connections and 1% interview rates sounds like you are doing great.

Could be that as well. Maybe someone else will chime in with their numbers so I can get a reality check. I'm doing everything almost manually right now so it's not efficient.

"Do things that don't scale" (https://paulgraham.com/ds.html) is probably also fine in the idea finding stage. At least then you are quicker to pivot than if you spend a lot of time optimizing the process and it still allows you to do a more personal approach instead of a copy paste outreach.

Can you provide some kind of compilation or useful report they get as a result of the discussion?

"hey, talk to me in an open ended fashion about how you do _____ in your business and I'll summarize the responses, show you how you compare and share all of the solutions I know about that can help you"

Years ago I worked for a bank who would often do UI research and focus groups.

Users, mortals, normal people would come in for a gift card and lunch.

Small business owners, C levels, non bank VP's had to be given (and im going to date myself) a palm V or something of equal value to come in....

Short of putting money on the table your response rates are HUGE. The question is are you getting the responses from the right/best segment of the industry. Remember your competing for their "attention" with every medical sales person out there, drugs, devices, marketing... "golf" is still a thing.

If you feel the need to add something into the mix: Build a News letter (head start on marketing. Run ad campaign (very targeted and expensive) and sign up form or survey (exclude all non dr's you capture).

Consider the situation from your prospects' perspective: most likely your outreach is being lost in a sea of SPAM.

I am not a doctor, but my university email was somehow put on a list of medical professionals.

So now my university email is barraged with all sorts of SPAM targeting medical professionals. It's impossible to unsubscribe/opt out. (I've tried, but I keep getting added to new lists. It's like the original list keeps reselling my email address.) I'm sure it's much worse for an actual medical professional.

I'm assuming you're not calling (Even with calls, I personally don't answer calls from unknown numbers due to the SPAM calls. You need to be leave a text if it is important, or be very persistent.)

Yeah I totally get that. Which is why I made it a point to really not sound like a salesman, but people are wired to be suspicious no matter what.

I was able to interview a few people and I consider them heroes because against all odds, they still gave me the time of day despite not knowing a thing about me.

Pay! Expert interviews can be had through expert networks. I know it’s a hustle to get free ones, and worth it, but you could go to GLG, Coleman, ThirdBridge etc and just pay for interviews if you need them done. An interesting alternative is with Arbolus, who lets you write questions and get asynchronous video responses. Research interview sourcing is very hard, and made harder when it is commercially motivated since people are wary of SUGR (selling under the guise of research). The expert networks impose codes of conduct and fees that make the process more costly, but also much more productive.

1. decide on an industry you have a bit of experience in.

2. look where those users are. they might be in subreddits or fb groups or wherever.

3. look for apps they use. there are lots of it in android play store and apple store.

4. read the helpful and critical reviews. these statements prove that there is demand, that some people like it, and that some people care enough to voice out their frustrations.

5. if you havent read the mom test, find a pirated copy, or just buy it. this book will course correct your interactions and expectations with your users.

You’re at the end of a long and well-monied line of people (read: pharma companies) that want to get the attention of health care professionals. Lifetime customer value of patients can be extremely high so healthcare companies will spend (within legal limits) a lot of money to influence doctors.

Doctors know this - and they do take advantage of it from time to time. But you’re competing with a lot of money for highly valuable time. Maybe consider going where doctors go (e.g. conferences) and bothering them there?

That's an interesting thought. I've done quite a bit of work in the medical/healthcare space in tech in the past. I think part of your issue is that doctors are notoriously hard to get a hold of. Also they don't make any of the decisions for tech.

If you're just generally trying to get an idea of pain points in the industry I think you should get more specific. Here are some for instances:

- Are you trying to make the interface between the doctor and the patient easier?

- Are you going to look at the way the doctors interact with the EHR (electronic health records) vendors?

- Are you trying to make the check-in process easier for patients?

- Are you trying to provide analytics for long term quality of care metrics on hospitals?

- Are you targeting small clinics, hospitals, or ER/minor emergency rooms?

Also for cold calling doctors on Linkedin, I am not surprised that you aren't getting much feedback. Most of the doctors I've known tend not to be into online stuff. You might have more luck reaching out to a local professional organization.

Also you might think about trying to contact nurses, nurse practitioners, or physician's assistants. There might be a local nurses professional organization that you could reach out to who could ask their members if anybody is interested. Just frame it as you're trying to figure out a way to make their jobs easier.

This ended up being a little rambly, but I hope it's useful. Cheers.

Thank you. YES on a lot of your bullet points. But I'm very open-minded about it and would work on any issue if enough people raise it.

I've been thinking of reaching out to nurses and other pros that work around docs.

I like the professional org idea.

I don't think you can be concise about it. It just feels weird to ask someone you've never met to come up with stuff that sucks about their job, as people will either ignore you or just make up a bunch of things out of politeness.

And even if they do answer you, it's a bad idea to commit to those answers. There's a book written specifically about this (The Mom Test), but the point is: asking people about their problems is not a good way to validate a startup idea.

You might not be trying to sell them but you are still taking up their time. I talk to kind of a lot of folks who reach out to me with a similar ask because I'm happy to help when I can. But 90%+ are warmish intros from someone else I know.

I'm partially talking to the person to help them out, partially to help out the introer who I already know, and partially because who knows maybe this person will actually be good to know.

Can you get intros from others? One way to do this is when a random cold outreach does agree to be interviewed by you, at the end of your call you can say, "Is there anyone else in your industry that you can introduce me to/that I should talk to?"

Even better if you've looked at their linkedin connections and can say, "Hey I noticed you are connected with X and Y. Do you know them well enough to introduce me? I'd love to have a similar conversation with them."

If they say yes then send them a pre-written intro to make it as low lift as possible for them. "Hey x, I asked y if they could introduce us. I'm looking to learn about painpoints for yada yada..."

I've used that strategy in the past and branching like that tends to have a much higher success rate than random cold outreach.

Read everything Atul Gawande has written. The following article, "Why Doctors Hate Their Computers", would be a particularly good place to start:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors-ha...

It illustrates a hugely significant problem you will face: decisions about what processes to follow and what software to use are made by administrators and not front-line doctors or nurses.

If you ask front-line doctors and nurses their biggest pain point, I imagine a common answer will be "our administrators are morons". (I have once heard this expressed by a nurse friend, with breathtaking vitriol.) Unfortunately that is not something you can write software to help with.

Change from healthcare to any industry and you'll often find the people picking the IT systems aren't the ones that use it, don't care about users concerns all that much and could likely be categorized as morons. This is mostly for large enterprises where IT is some department "over there" and organization size is > 1000 people.

Skip hospital doctors because they don't make purchasing decisions. Doctors who own their own practice either outright or as a group partner are actually very easy to interview: in the US (assuming where you're located) there are at least a dozen within each county. Have you tried door-to-door? I helped a friend with healthcare customer discovery interviews for a few months, and it's surprisingly effective.

Hold on! It is hard for me (not in US) to get a walk in appointment when actually sick. And they will have reception staff that wont take BS, so what is the play? Is it literally lobby at closing time and catch them on the way to the car?

Not quite, they are small business owners. Small businesses need revenue to stay afloat, so they like to make and save money. You can target them like any other small business. Ask for the person around with the most authority (doc is probably with patients), tell them you can save them money and how you can do it or to see if they can set up a meeting of some kind with their business manager (whoever that is), hopefully they pass it on to their boss.

At least this is my naive understanding

I would start with contacting people in your town or area. Tell them that you recently became interested in problem X and offer to meet with them whenever and wherever they choose. You also need to do a lot of homework to ask intelligent questions. Finally, ask yourself if healthcare is the right choice. That's a tough industry if you don't have any contacts and/or background.

Read it -> "The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you"

https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/...

We’ve been developing niche medical software successfully for some decades.

First, it helps that it’s niche—it avoids the “make healthcare better with electronic healthcare records” space, which can only but descend into making a much of text boxes available on a screen and promising that AI will do… something…

Second, we will listen to our clients, and probe their needs. But we’re most successful when we observe our clients. When we’re not in the thick of it, we have more space to ask “does it have to be this way?” We work very hard to formulate the problem so that a piece of software is not the default solution.

Few of the pain points are “exciting” or “glamorous”. But anything that means the practitioner is spending more time with the patient is a big win, even if it means applying some very boring technology.

Best of luck.

Thank you! I tip my hat to you for being successful in this difficult space.

Get an actual job in the domain and you'll quickly discover all the pain points. For example, become a medical physicist or dosimetrist and try working in a cancer clinic. Asking to shadow random medical professionals won't work well unless you have a friend on the inside greasing the wheels.

This is great advice because it works for so many professions. Want to make a product for lawyers? Go to law school and be a lawyer for 10 years. Bam. Next question.

This response is kind of funny but it actually really highlights the wrong way to think about these things as well. The suggestion isn't to have a career in medicine it is to get your boots on the ground. You have to find a clever way to get a vast amount of hands on experience quickly. For lawyers the equivalent won't be going to law school it might be doing transcription or office tasks or secure courier work or being an EA or volunteering at the DA office or some other clever hack.

Be an assistant at a law firm for 3 months would presumably cut it. Domain knowledge for something like this is not optional.

But what’s the issue with just talking to people? Do you have to experience it?

People are notoriously bad at describing their actual problems. Most of the time, they will describe their perceived solutions. What's worse, even of you get to the bottom of their problem, they won't describe their procedures that they follow day by day. This is because to them it's trivial, on the level of muscle memory, but to you as an outsider it won't even occur to ask about it unless you actually see what they are doing. By just talking to people, no matter how many hours, you'll be missing a lot of context and your product will be bad.

I am sure you are already doing this and the "what their pain point is" phrasing of this post is only for succinctness. In my experience, asking a practitioner about their pain point is seldom the starting point for an unbiased conversation. It can often lead to a freezing of ideas while they try to look and find such pain points, but more importantly here, you are asking them to have identified the problem in a way. Far more effective would be to completely eliminate the word pain point and focus on descriptives like longest or most error prone task, only as confirmation ,after observing for a while. Again I am quite sure from the later description of your question that you are doing something like this, but putting this out there to emphasize the importance of it.

Read this and follow the links to what Jake’s wife wrote as well

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40114696

Article: https://jakeseliger.com/2024/04/22/the-emotional-trial-of-cl...

Thank you. I would love to build something to make trials easier to find by the patients themselves, so you don't have to wait for the bureaucracy to kick in.

I think Dane Maxwell is one of the best at doing this.

He published a PDF guide here: https://thefoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Intro-t...

And there are many examples of him doing idea extraction online. While you can do IE via email/chat, phone calls or even in-person meetings are most effective.

---

- Instead of quantity, go for quality. You just need a few good idea extraction sessions. (You may have to cold-call 100's of contacts before that first good session, though...)

How about going to a medical conference/event to meet doctors in person?

Yes, looking into that for sure.

Thanks for the PDF. Generally, I try to set up Zooms because it's a great back-and-forth. In-person meetings would be insanely good just for the human factor, but docs aren't into that it seems.

I briefly tried doing idea extraction on the dietician market.

My cousin was a dietician so she gave me a wonderful session. (I still have the notes.) She also referred me to a fellow dietician. That session did not go so well.

Very small sample size, but it seems there is a correlation between dieticians and a personality type that is not the easiest (for me) to talk with. Either certain personality types are driven to become dieticians, or the arduous journey to become a dietician filters/forms this personality. Not sure about other fields...

I decided to switch niches when I discovered how complex it would be to follow HIPAA regulations.

I can't wait to engage with dieticians. I feel like I need more bashing in my life :-)

I run a sales dev agency and your numbers are decent. Here are two things to try:

- message founders in the space with "I'm working on a new startup and could use your advice"

- after each interview ask them for a referral to someone who you could interview

This creates a referral flywheel and eventually will be a function that brings you customers. I have written a blog post on the topic but I don't think linking here is cool.

https://predictablerevenue-newsletter.beehiiv.com/p/customer...

Hope this is ok/helps ^

What exactly in healthcare/medical space ? Are you interested in Drug discovery, Genomics (diagnostics, genetic testing) or software services for patients , health care professionals. There are plenty of problems in every area including the new AI applications for older problems. Narrowing down your focus area or something that you have personally experienced should be a good starting point.

Find where those people are. E.g. popular healthcare forums, maybe Facebook groups, etc. Go to healthcare events in person, all those people will be there to chat.

I've had luck in another field, finding a very popular forum online that those in the field used. I simply introduced myself and offered to do IT work on their offices as a chance to meet people and learn more about the industry. It worked wonders.

I've actually thought of doing IT services for clinics as a means to get a foot in the door. That's some seriously deep undercover stuff... Very time consuming (could be worth it regardless). Were you getting paid for the IT services?

I found the 20 people I needed to talk to.

I found out where they worked.

I called the public number.

I asked to talk to them.

I explained I was thinking about starting a startup and I needed some help thinking through some ideas.

2 of them told me they couldn't give me the time. 15 gave me a longer than 1 hour call at a later date, 3 of them let me fly out to them and spend a day with them.

Took me about 5/6 months.

How did it work out? Did you get useful information and start a successful business?

Of so is the business still doing what you thought it would be doing after you’d done those interviews?

It failed because I fucked up a bunch of other unrelated stuff sadly, I was still in the throes of alcoholism and made a lot of poor choices(sober now). The product market fit was decent for getting going, we built the solution and people seemed to like using the product, we had contracts etc: https://municipal.systems/

It sounds great and motivating, but what was your field? I feel doctors to be less than enthusiastic about engaging with people outside of their circle, especially if I ask for help about doing a startup. It's weird but I feel like a lot of them see you as a competitor somehow.

I really loved this thread. After reading all the comments and based on personal experience I would recommend getting a job in a hospital, anywhere, even in the restaurant. Build up a circle of friends who work there and brainstorm with them every day over lunch. They will soon tell you what works and doesn’t

1. Pay the professional board (by specialty) for access to their listserv. They will send out the email for you. Can be pricey.

2. You can host a booth at/attend a medical conference, and hand out or display QR code links to a survey with the interview questions.

I've found LinkedIn difficult to get feedback from GPs. Have you tried attending medical conferences? In some countries, you can gain access to the world’s largest conferences for free if you apply through certain organizations.

I have been thinking of conferences, this sounds like a dream-like setting for this. I'm early in my journey but last I checked those are THOUSANDS of dollars to attend. Did you have some pointers on hacks to get in for free? Which orgs?

Here in Poland, we have PARP - a government organization that helps small to medium-sized businesses by covering almost all attendance costs, excluding travel.

Lucky you!

[0] "What problems do you have?" is too vague.

[1] The response rate correlates to the product of how painful the problem is and whether the potential responder has some faith that you have a solution.

DO tell them you are doing /market research/ and really appreciate their experience and insight. Generally I have offered an "honorarium" of say $200 for a 30 minute interview (for doctors you might want to offer $500). 90% of people never collect the money, just that somehow offering an "honorarium" makes the whole thing seem more legit and organized. A high honorarium (like $500 for doctors) will also demonstrate respect (and they really won't collect the money).

DONT include the question in your request. That will Heisenberg results.

DO ask then about /frustrations/, rather than /problems/. Frustrations are externally caused. Many people proudly believe that they are already handling any /problems/

From a practical standpoint, do you just wait until they hit you up later asking for their money?

At the end of the call, you ask them for payment details, and usually they say "oh dont bother"

LOL I love it, they will think you're a scammer trying to get their bank info and you get a free call out of it. The hustle is real.

1. Pay the board for access to their list serve. They will send out the email for you.

2. You can host a booth at/attend a medical conference, and hand out/display QR code links to your survey

physicians only have 10 minutes with their patients. How much time are you taking from them? On the rare chance they are looking to learn more about tech, they'll probably be going to health events where they're practically wined and dined to be there.

What city are you in? There must be a health tech meeting of some sort near you. I live in Austin and I run one with 400 members, but there are 5 others programming meetups all the time. pharma, billers, techs, and nurses shouldn't be forgotten either!

asking people for pain points like an interview is never going to work unless you have connections/network to introduce you

there is a hack around this but each industry is different

So... What's the hack?

Really dumb foolish suggestion? Check volunteer opportunities at your local hospital or health clinics.

I don’t find this at all foolish. I agree and while OP is looking for doctor input, a better avenue might be leveraging nurses as a seed point and growing from there. As (and this isn’t meant as a slight) grunt workers can be more open to sharing hardships and a good entry point for moving up the chain if they find your argument/solution as valid.

Yea, I was thinking that volunteering would help them meet people and see their pain points first-hand. Observing/shadowing sounds like a lot better way to get insight into what's going on. Plus they're offering up help in exchange for a chance to learn about their potential customer base.

I crossed over from medical to software because of this issue. The reality is that so much of the software created for us falls short because the depth of knowledge almost always isn't deep enough. It is painfully obvious to us that if the software devs knew medicine as well as we did they wouldn't have made many of the design decisions that they did. I know that is an unsatisfying answer but it's how my colleagues and I feel.

My advice to you is to enter this area only if you or someone involved is capable of getting very deep into the kind of medicine you're writing software for. I don't just mean "they commonly do procedures X and Y and tests A and B a lot".

The reputation of people in medicine not liking tech is wrong. We just don't like using bad tech, which is most of it.

It would help if you gave more targeted thoughts on what specifically you're looking to develop.

Have you tried expert networks? Some of these connect people like you with experts in the industry. Some are practitioners while others are just “thought leaders” so you need to separate the two. They usually cost $xx-$xxx a hour but they’re worth the time and money rather than finding people willing to talk to you

Yeah. There are companies that specialize in these sort of connections. But getting an appointment with a specialist is hard enough much less connecting to a qualitative survey.

In addition the the other comments, maybe you have some personal networks. But expert networks are probably the best bet that doesn't involve personal connections.

Only when torturing them...

I understand that you're asking a slightly different question than the one I'm answering, but having been involved in the JTBD world, my spidey sense is that you could save yourself a ton of pain if you watch this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQjBawcU_qg

and maybe read this (optional)

https://therewiredgroup.com/case-studies/milkshakes/

TL;DR: A lot of folks (myself included) think that the sort of discovery interview you're describing is somewhere between unhelpful and dangerous. People cannot tell you what their problem is, they can only tell you what they think you want to hear. Yes, I'm generalizing, but it's hard to estimate how many entrepreneur-years have been burned by attempting to solve a problem someone told them that they have.

My suggestion is that you figure out a way to deeply embed yourself in a world or industry, possibly for a few years. The less sexy the domain, the better. Pay close attention, look for solvable problems with your own eyes.

Often there are opportunities hiding in plain sight that people don't see because there's an entrenched "way things are done". But frankly, you have no business disrupting how soup gets canned if you have never worked in a soup canning plant. Don't bring on an industry expert as a startup co-founder; be the industry expert.

edenband.io

Not specific advice but are you A/B testing? One very salesy fluffing msg vs one straight to the point?