Negative feedback hurts. It’s easy to take personally and get offended. It’s easy to dismiss too. But negative feedback is a lot better than no feedback at all. The worst thing for a startup -at any stage- is crickets.
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Ugh. Silence is the ultimate form of “you suck” feedback. Better that people take the time to tell you to your face. And in many cases, negative feedback can be more valuable than positive feedback, which is often given because people want to be nice. As a founder, you don’t need nice, you need honest and meaningful. So customers that tell you that you suck could be your most valuable ones ever. And just because they’re negative, doesn’t mean they won’t help you along the way, and ultimately buy from you.
When receiving negative (or positive) feedback, it’s important to understand the context. For example, feedback at any point in time, without any sense of historical feedback, is a very small data point. You shouldn’t ignore it, but keep it in perspective.
You need to understand the “why” behind feedback as much as possible. So don’t be scared to ask for more information from people that have just told you that you suck. Oftentimes they’re quite willing to speak their mind further. You need to understand your customers as much as possible. It may be that you’re focused on the wrong target market. It may be that you released really early, and find out that with a bit more work on the product, you can go back to those same people and they’re willing to try again. Sure it’d be nice if those people loved your product right away, but the above scenario is still a good one: you received honest (bad) feedback, you figured out what to do, you’ve determined it’s worth doing (because it impacts a broader, valuable market), and you still have a chance of making a sale down the road.
Negative feedback is discouraging. But you have to remember that it’s part of the learning process. It doesn’t feel like that all the time, but if you’re digging into the feedback, understanding the context, and using the feedback to make decisions, it’s going to help steer you in the right direction.
Silence is the worst. Negative feedback is just part of the process. You’ll need thick skin (every startup founder needs thick skin and a healthy dose of delusion). Try your best to avoid the crazy up and down roller coaster that comes with good and bad feedback. Focus on learning. Focus on extracting the value from feedback, and moving forward.
