Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.

By David Aronchick

“You suck. I’ve never seen a product as bad as yours. Here are the ten reasons why you will never accomplish your goals, laid out in great detail.” The first time entrepreneur is terrified of getting this in an email, let alone seeing it in a public blog post or twitter feed. And God forbid it is someone famous or more experienced than them doing the commenting – the horror! The more experienced entrepreneur, on the other hand, is not just ok with a comment like this, she is ecstatic. What’s the difference between these two people?

You have spent every second of your life building your product, only to have someone publicly go nuts. Does this mean your free time, social time, family time and spare energy was all wasted? Hardly. The hardest thing in the world is creating a product that people care about, either positively or negatively. So you got torn a new corn hole, so what? At least the person took the time and energy to write a comment about what you did. Right now, despite your urge to reach across the Interwebs and throttle them, she is your best insight to winning users’ hearts and minds. So how should you respond to such vitriol?

 

Here are some dos and don’ts: 

  • DON’T try to fight the battle publicly. You certainly want to recognize the contribution, and take it to a more private conversation. It is far better to get them privately (or in person if possible!) to detail how you can address their concerns. When the discussion is taking place in front of everyone, people will be playing to the audience, and you are much less likely to get to a positive place.
  • DON’T try and counter every argument. Your default will be to be very defensive of your choices in building your product – after all, it is your baby! But the fact is that if this person is complaining, your rationale in making those choices is either not clear, or does not sync with the way she expects to use the product. Listen to the complaints, counter where it makes sense (“We know you want it to do A, we built feature X to do that, did you know about that? How does X fall short?”), and where it does not, just write it down for later.
  • DO put their comments in perspective. She is just a passionate user, and certainly may not understand your business model or constraints on what you can offer. The best products in the world go out of their way to fill the user’s requests without ever revealing the specifics of your business – this should be your goal.
  • DO thank your lucky stars. Caring enough to give feedback is nothing but positive. I would not go out and publicly worship them, that reeks too much of desperation, but you should at least try to engage more. If you update your product, and get at what she is really looking for, it would not be at all surprising for your biggest critic to turn into one of your biggest supporters.

It can feel like your guts are being ripped out to hear someone – ANYONE – tear your product down. “Doesn’t she know how much blood, sweat and tears you have put into this? Who is she to make this judgment; she doesn’t understand what you were trying to do at all!” And worse, if they’re famous or have done this before, you are going to be even quicker to dismiss them – “It is different this time! She doesn’t get me!” is what you will cry. However, you will, in all cases, be wrong. No matter who she is, she is first and foremost a user. To quote the old engineer maxim, “Unless it’s on fire, it is a software problem.” Well, unless she’s being paid by your competitors, it is YOUR problem. Take advantage of the opportunity, swallow the criticism whole and build a better product.

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