Finally! I’m going to CHINA.  It’s been on my to-do list for 2 years now.  On Sunday (June 7th) I’ll be boarding a plane with 35+ other geeks headed to Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai with the goal of gaining insight into the tech & innovation trends coming out of East Asia.

Also on the agenda is two Startonomics events where (Beijing) I’ll be presenting on applying Startup Metrics to a group of Tech Entrepreneurs.

Overview of www.GeeksOnAPlane.com

Organized by Web2Asia (@web2asia), The Founders Fund and Dave McClure. We are inviting international investors and tech entrepreneurs on a 10 day orientation tour of Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai’s Internet, Mobile & Gaming sector.

Follow the fun on Twitter: @geeksonaplane

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If you’ve ever felt a bit crazy, different or that you might not fit in … good for you! The “crazy ones” are those that push the status quo, that dream up the big ideas and shape our futures. Care less about what people think and more about creating. We need more creators. I don’t care how freakin’ weird the idea - just build it. Let your dream control you. Seriously, go for it.

Notice: Parents and friends don’t discourage, they just don’t want to see you hurt (fail, mess up, loose all your money, etc). Be open to their feedback - but they don’t decide. You do!

When’s the last time you felt crazy?

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Thomas Edison once said “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”.  If that’s true, then out of the 99%, 45% of that time should be spent talking and listening to your customers.

As a startup (or any stage of business for that matter) here’s some ideas on how to build a feedback loop into your business.

Feedback Loops

• Site Feedback
• Surveys
• Meetups
• Usability Testing
• Listening Online

Site Feedback

Give your visitors a way to “tell” you what they want.  Here’s three tactics that work quite well.

Search Box

Monitoring the keywords people use to search your site is invaluable.  Review these weekly, and adjust your sites content and information accordingly.  If you don’t have a search bar, you can use Google or Yahoo to build one for free.

User Feedback Widgets

Depending on what your website does, you could use Kampyle for any site; UserVoice for online applications; or GetSatisfaction for general customer support.  The key is to pick one, and review the feedback weekly (if not daily).

Surveys

People love to give advice, all you need to do is just ask.  There’s many different questions you could ask, but the goal is to keep it simple, short and focused.  I’m a fan of using the Net Promoter Score question, as well as customer development.

Administrating the Surveys

• SurveyMonkey - super fast, super simple.
• Survey.io - great for product companies
• Phone Survey - using call centers (or automate using Twilio)

Meetups

You should meet with your customers in person, and best to do it over dinner (break bread!) and ask them for ideas on how you can improve what you do (product & company). Just listen, always say thanks, and bring the ideas back to the team.

Managing the Events

• TwtVite - Create a tweetup, invite your tweeple!
• Eventbrite - Event managment.

Usability Testing

Website usability is the super fun, and scary at the same time.  Watching people try and accomplish certain tasks you “thought” were obvious and self evident can be a crush on the ego.   That being said, its invaluable. Its worth the investment.

Usability Tools & Approaches

• Loop11 - web-based user experience tool
• Silver Back - guerilla usability testing
• UserTesting - Low cost usability testing
• In Person: Craigslist + $20 iTunes or Starbucks Card = Cheap / Simple

Listening Online

There’s many, many ways to find out how people are “describing” your company.  Some of this information is noise, some of it’s invaluable insight - but it’s definitely worth a look.

Tags on Social Bookmarks

Using sites like delicious - you can lookup your site and see what tags people are using to define you. Try it out: http://delicious.com/url/

Search Twitter

Simple, search twitter for your product name, subscribe to the RSS feed and review it weekly.

Other Resources (must follow blogs)

Eric Ries - Net Promoter Score: an operational tool to measure customer satisfaction
Steve Blank - Author of Four Steps to the Epiphany
Sean Ellis - Creating & Implementing a Web 2.0 Marketing Plan
Andrew Chen - Talk to your target customer in 4 easy steps

If you have any other suggestions, links, or resources - I would truly appreciate a comment below with your feedback.

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