The main reason startups fail isn’t obtaining funding, bad technology or a poor match of founders. Research shows that most startups fail because they never reach a ‘Product-Market Fit’ – their product does not meet the market’s needs, or in other words – the product does not adequately meet the needs of the consumer.

So how do you beat the statistics and build a product that works?

For many companies, the answer is to be Data-Driven. That is, analyzing the product usage data and user behavior patterns to know if the product is in the right direction or not. But does “Data-Driven” necessarily mean Excel tables, graphs and big numbers from thousands of users?

Shirley Baumer – Product manager at Monday.com, claims not, and that the combination of qualitative data with quantitative data provides a broader picture of users’ needs. Specifically, Shirley emphasizes the importance of interviewing users to understand users’ needs in a deep way: “… Qualitative questions can answer challenging questions like – what’s the problem we’re trying to solve? Why do people act like this? What’s actually going on here?“

In this episode, Shirley takes us through the stages of conducting an effective interview – from deciding on the right questions and coordinating expectations with the interviewee, through points on conducting the interview itself, to analyzing the data collected and ways to communicate the insights gained from it back to the company.