• Table of Contents

Brief Summary

This chapter provides an overview of key concepts that will be explored in greater depth throughout the book. It focuses on defining the idea of a "bullseye customer," outlining the process of conducting a bullseye customer sprint, and explaining the rationale behind specific strategies, such as the importance of creating three prototypes and why five is a good number of interviews per round.

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My Reflections

The way I understand bullseye customer and bullseye customer sprints is - you're simultaneously defining and refining who your bullseye customer is and what you're building for them as you learn. They’re not necessarily going to be your only customers but by defining and focusing on a bullseye customer, you create a very well defined problem space to measure progress against. A bullseye customer sprint helps validate whether you truly understand who your user is and what matters most to them. It’s a bit like improvising a recipe and adjusting the flavors as you taste along the way—if that analogy makes any sense 🤔?

The thought of running a bullseye customer sprint makes me feel nervous and anxious! I’ve been brainstorming potential ideas to build and considering who my bullseye customers might be. But every time I convince myself something is a good idea, I immediately think, "Nah, no one would use that!" And that’s exactly what bullseye customer sprints are meant to address. Instead of endlessly overthinking and running in circles, I need to take the first step: put pen to paper, define my bullseye customer, and understand what truly matters to them. Through the sprint interviews, I’ll gain clarity—whether it’s confirmation I’m on the right track, evidence I’m completely off base, or get a glimpse of insight that I could latch onto to guide another cycle of prototyping, recruiting, and interviewing.

I have yet another analogy for you that I just thought of! I think bullseye customer sprints is going to be a lot like cleaning mud off a window. The first time you wipe it, all the mud just smudges around and it’s not actually clean. However, you’ll be able to see a glimpse of transparency through the smudgy mess. You wipe it again, it’s still smudged but less so. As you keep wiping it, the smudges get less and less, eventually going away and you finally have a crystal clear view through the window 🤞.

I think this process going to be a huge lesson in being comfortable with being wrong for me! As I move my way into chapter 2 here is my product idea that I’ll be using to compose my list of questions and goals.

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Notes

What is a bullseye customer?

“Your bullseye customer is the very specific subset of your target market who initially is most likely to adopt your new product or service.”

What is the goal of a Bullseye Customer Sprint?

1. to validate and refine hypothesis about who will be the bullseye customer
2. Identify the features and unique value propositions for those specific customers

How are BCS structures?

• 5 - 3 -1: 5 customers, 3 prototypes, 1 day
  • 5 potential bullseye customers is a good number to avoid overdoing it on interviews but should give strong enough signal on if you’re moving in the right direction or not.
  • 3 prototypes allow the customers to compare and contrast between things they like. This is very similar to shopping! Much like shopping, customers will talk about pros and cons amongst similar but different products which provides great insights you might not otherwise get with just 1 prototype. 3 prototypes also helps avoid being married to 1 solution
  • 1 day because we’re trying to learn fast! We need to learn fast in order to quickly iterate to quickly find our bullseye customer and the value our product brings to them!

Other note worthy tidbits from this chapter

• Don’t try to answer all your questions with one sprint. I think a recurring theme to this book with be narrowing focus and prioritizing. That seems to be what this sentiment is getting at - really focus on whats important which is identifying bullseye customer and the value proposition for them.
• Qualitative interviews give you the most bang for your buck. This is such a simple way to verbalize I’ve felt for so long. There are so many ways to conduct user research and so many of the companies I have worked for always bias towards things that yield more quantitive results. For some reason those quantitive results have always ended up causing us to have more questions than answers vs just talking to users and synthesizing the insights that come from those conversations.