What are some good hacks to get mobile app developers spend 20 minutes on customer interview or try out your MVP?

Steve Blank has already covered this in depth in his book 4 Steps to the Epiphany, as well as a video here: http://startupweekend.wistia.com/medias/tao3s8hf7l My approach is based on his outline, with a twist. 1) I try and conduct the interviews at the customers office or place of work, at minimum on their devide (computer, mobile phone) so I can ask to see how they work. 2) I never try and sell them on a the solution, but work hard to truly understand if/where the problem is. 3) Always provide guidance to the conversation, but ask open ended questions. 4) Ask questions like "What do you do 3 minutes before, and after, you do that action (or use our product)? Other tips would be - Write down the words they use. Metaphors and taxonomies are VERY important to ensuring your product is approachable. - Use 3 simple slides: Problem, Current Solutions, Proposed Solution Hope that helps.

I have built several multi-million dollar businesses using (2) very simple questions: "What makes you say that...." and "Tell me more...." No matter what someone says to you, you just keep asking one (or both) of the questions. If you do it 4 or 5 times in a row you'll learn everything you ever wanted to know.

It sounds like you have a wound care physical product? Is that correct? Who will b the end user? Nurses in home health? Hospital nurses and general and trauma surgeons? Who buys products for these end users? Cmo of large health systems? Ultimately, you may need to consider cardinal health, McKesson for distribution? How will you manufacture this product? Check out alibaba for starters. How much will your customer pay for this product? How is it better than what they are using now? Will this product allow burn victims to be discharged earlier? Will it reduce hospitalization in nursing home residents? You will need to assemble a team, probably an MBA for starters... What is the total addressable market? Start a conversation with the buyers for your local healthcare system and ask them their pain points in wound care? Work with a local physician who might be a champion user and persuade administration to try a pilot with your product. In short get one customer who will pay a certain price for it, consider presales, like tile is doing now. This should get you started! Once you have these answers you may be ready for a grass roots fundraising campaign on medstartr! I am happy to help! Best, dr hodge

I think what Frank says is absolutely spot-on with one exception. In healthcare, you might not have as much choice as you think. Ultimately, if you are dependent on adoption of your solution by multiple stakeholders, you should engage early and equally with all stakeholders so as to understand the eventual objections you'll have to overcome and hopefully acquire some early evangelists but focus on where there is least resistance to try and build a forcing function that reduces resistance to the change you're trying to make. I built an online service in the late 90s that was sold to employers and adopted by individual employees. The Company was subsequently acquired so happy to talk to share that experience with you in a call.

That is an interesting situation and I am sure many others share a similar concern. I would recommend trying out Podio (free), it lets you create all sorts of templates to capture and work with information (text fields, categories, dates, etc). You can set it to receive e-mail for you and it will automatically insert the appropriate information into the fields (including attachments). You can decide if your staff only sees the name of the student and the attachment if you wish. You can also create a workflow that informs you when your staff members finish the corrections and are ready to be sent back. You can even use it to keep track of all pending essays, their progress and due dates so you are always on time. Let me know if you have any questions!