“Consumers don’t think what they feel, don’t say what they think and don’t do what they say.”
— David Ogilvy

Trying to figure out whether you have a good idea? Don’t ask people what they think! A better way to assess a new concept is to give folks the opportunity to vote without realizing it.

Here’s an example: a couple of prospective founders at Stanford came to LaunchPad office hours to pitch a new business that involved connecting parents with babysitters (details have been changed to protect confidentiality). They felt that trust was the biggest obstacle to establishing new babysitting relationships, and so their killer feature is an algorithm that assesses trustworthiness.

“What have you done so far?” Perry asked.
“We’re working on the algorithm, and we’re talking to a bunch of customers. They love the idea,” they replied.

Here’s the problem: this answer bears striking resemblance to what almost every prospective founder says: “I’ve talked to a bunch of customers, and they’re all super enthusiastic!” The reality is, if you ask someone if they like your idea, there’s too much social pressure. They don’t want to hurt your feelings! So if it costs them nothing to tell you they like it, they’ll tell you they like it. Something noncommittal like, “Let me know when you’ve built it!”

Do not build on this premise! This is not high-credibility data.

Instead, create something simple (an email, for example), and give yourself an opportunity to observe customer behavior rather than ask for customer feedback. A behavior might be, “Did they open the email based on the subject line?” or “Did they hit the ‘Request more info’ button we put at the bottom of the email?”

When you give customers decisions to make — even when they don’t realize they’re making a decision, per se — you’re creating what we call “high-credibility data.”

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