Making Decisions with User Research from Startup to Scale-up | Behzod Sirjani (Advisor & Partner at Reforge, ex-Slack)
Welcome to Growthmates. This is Kate Syuma, Growth advisor, previously Head of Growth Design at Miro. I’m building Growthmates as a place to connect with inspiring leaders to help you grow yourself and your product. Here you can learn how companies like Dropbox, Adobe, Canva, Loom and many more are building excellent products and growth culture. Get all episodes and a free playbook for Growth teams on our brand-new website — growthamtes.club, and press follow to support us on your favorite platforms.
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In this episode, I met with Behzod Sirjani — a leader in Research space who worked in companies like Slack and Facebook, and currently supporting the broader community as an Advisor and Reforge partner
Research is one of my favourite topics, and we discussed how different companies should approach: from Startup to Scale up. By the end of this episode, you can learn how to get customer insights even in a small team, when it’s the right moment to bring a dedicated researcher, common mistakes, and how to scale the research forward.
This episode is supported by Appcues — the platform that helps you design, deploy, and test captivating onboarding experiences.
Appcues created the Product Adoption Academy to help you level up your product adoption for free. Check out the template that I created to help companies uncover meaningful improvements. Find an example of Dropbox Onboarding inside and apply it to review any growth flows: appcues.com/growthmates
Key highlights from this episode that you can implement right away 👇
1. User Research Evolution:
* Startup phase: Founders act as first researchers, focusing on problem validation and customer understanding.
* Growth phase (Series A): Consider hiring a dedicated researcher when research tasks start overwhelming the team.
* Scale-up/Enterprise phase: Implement research ops and scalable processes.
2. Early-stage Research Methods:
* Interviews are crucial for understanding customer decision-making.
* Usability testing helps identify user expectations vs. actual experiences.
* Deeper partnerships with customers (e.g., design partners, diary studies) provide ongoing feedback.
3. When to Hire a Dedicated Researcher:
* When research tasks start taking too much time from other responsibilities.
* Ideally, before there's a full-time workload, allowing time for infrastructure setup.
4. Integrating Research into Teams:
* New researchers should map the organization's research needs and current practices.
* Implement a mix of direct research, partnering with other teams, and supporting self-service research.
* Use office hours to provide guidance and support to non-researchers.
5. Scaling Research:
* Implement research ops to protect customers, the business, and improve efficiency.
* Standardize processes and tools across teams (e.g., survey templates, question banks).
* Focus on high-leverage activities that raise the floor of research quality.
6. Common Mistakes in Research at Scale:
* Using research only for validation rather than exploration.
* Researchers working in silos or "throwing research over the fence."
* Forgetting that growth is everyone's job, including researchers.
7. Key Research Skills:
* Asking "why" and "how" questions to gain deeper insights.
* Understanding the business context and how research drives growth.
8. The Role of Research in Growth:
* Research should directly contribute to acquisition, retention, and monetization.
* Researchers need to understand how their work impacts business growth.
And one more thing 🎁
To celebrate the first Growthmates anniversary, we prepared a gift to our community — “The Holistic Playbook for Growth Teams”. It’s a reflection of industry trends, in-depth interviews with our guests, and insights gathered from a hundred companies. You can get this playbook for free on our new website → growthmates.club.
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Where to find Kate Syuma, Growth Advisor (ex-Miro):
* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ekaterina-syuma/
* Newsletter: katesyuma.substack.com
Where to find our guest — Behzod Sirjani:
* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/behzodsirjani/
* “Yet Another Studio” Website:
* Effective Customer Conversations Reforge course: https://www.reforge.com/courses/effective-customer-conversations/details
What we’ve covered in this episode:
00:34 Meeting Behzod Sirjani: Research Leader
02:09 The Importance of User Research
02:51 Behzod's Journey: From Facebook to Slack
09:20 Building Research Practices at Slack
14:42 Founding “Yet Another Studio”
22:40 Research Strategies for Startups
32:49 Investing in Facebook Video
33:29 Building from Scratch with Big Companies
34:06 Recognizing Startup Situations in Big Companies
35:23 Scaling Up: When to Hire a Dedicated User Researcher
35:51 Balancing Research and Decision Making
38:03 The Role of a User Researcher
45:46 The Importance of Office Hours
46:26 Scaling Research in Large Companies
51:50 Common Mistakes in Research at Scale
55:14 Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Resources Referenced:
* "The Field Study Handbook" by Jan Chipchase : https://www.amazon.com/Field-Study-Handbook-Jan-Chipchase/dp/1939727065
* Upcoming book "Research at Scale" by Kate Towsey : https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/research-that-scales/
Thank you for listening! Subscribe to the show on growthmates.club and get free playbook with frameworks and insights. If you find this valuable, please share it with your friends and colleagues, and subscribe to this show on your favourite platforms to get new episodes. Let’s keep growing together!
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