Thread by @joshelman

There is a lot of chatter about when a startup should create a “growth team.” But I am recently hearing of a much better and even more important trend of startups starting a research team or a much better name coined by @abrashafi of @irldotcom, a

“Curiosity team”

With a research or Curiosity team you want to hire PhD level social scientists and researchers.

People who know how to run studies - both qualitative (Eg interviews, diary studies) and quantitative (Eg surveys) - and identify and characterize real insights about your users

The key is being curious about who your customers are, what are the challenges they face in life, what problems can you solve for them, what problems *are* you solving for them.

I find it so valuable to hear the words and language customers use to describe themselves and you.

With incredible researchers - you get insights that go far beyond your own instincts.

To be clear, this analysis won’t give you your product solutions. Customers never can tell you what to build.

But even better it will spark ideas.

Customers will tell you what is going on in their lives.

Your curiosity team will provide the insights into what they need.

A lot of people say the product manager is the voice of the customer. But if set up properly, the researcher or the curiosity team is the true voice of the customer. They have spent more time talking to customers, poring over survey data, and reading answers than anyone else.

This allows the product team to be the voice of the business - balancing customer needs against feasibility and business strategy. And still keeps someone on the core team representing customers and their needs and wants and language everywhere.

For any consumer company I would hire researchers and build a curiosity team at least as early as a growth team. The earliest people should be having and getting these insights from talking to customers all the time.

This early investment is a huge reason for Robinhood’s success. Some of my greatest learnings in my career have come from thoughtful research. For example a study we did with trained researchers early in my time at Twitter joshelman.medium.com/four-questions…

Anyway - build a curiosity team and hire some researchers!