Product Genius, the Podcast for Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Startups
Honest advice for inventors—with obscure cultural references included at no extra charge.
Episode
229
Get Feedback on Your Product from People in Your Target Market with Justin Chen of PickFu
Are you developing an invention based on what customers actually want—or what you assume they want? Noah and Steven talk with PickFu co-founder Justin Chen about making real consumer market research accessible to inventors and product entrepreneurs. Learn how to test product concepts, pricing, features, packaging, logos, store listings, and even your target market with carefully selected respondents—and why the written explanation behind a customer’s choice can be more valuable than the vote itself. From competing directly against top products to simply asking “What do you think this is?”, this episode shows how fast, affordable customer feedback can help you develop and launch a better invention.
Core Topics for this episode:
- Market Research
- Customer Validation
Key Takeaways Include:
Listen here:
Episode Blog
Stop Asking Your Friends: How Real Customer Feedback Can Make Your Product Better
Inventors have a feedback problem.
When you have spent months thinking about a product, it becomes almost impossible to see it the way a customer sees it for the first time. You know what every feature does. You understand why the shape looks that way. You know why the packaging says what it says.
Your customer knows none of that.
That gap between what the inventor knows and what the customer sees is exactly where market research becomes valuable.
In this episode of Product Genius, Noah McNeely and Steven Julian talk with Justin Chen, co-founder of PickFu, about making real consumer research accessible to entrepreneurs who do not have Procter & Gamble-sized research budgets.
The big idea is simple: stop guessing what your target market thinks when you can actually ask them.
Market Research Is Not Just for Giant Companies
Traditional consumer research can be expensive and slow.
A large company may hire research consultants, build long-form surveys, recruit carefully selected respondents, clean the data, analyze the results, and eventually receive a polished report.
That process can cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
For a solo inventor or startup, that is usually unrealistic.
PickFu approaches the problem differently.
Instead of commissioning a giant research project, an entrepreneur can ask one focused question of a targeted audience.
You might ask:
Which product design do you prefer?
What do you think this product does?
Which package would you choose?
What would you expect to pay?
Which feature matters most?
Why would you choose this product instead of a competitor?
The responses can begin arriving within minutes.
That changes market research from a giant milestone into something that can become part of the everyday product-development process.
The “Why” Is More Valuable Than the Vote
Knowing that 60% of respondents prefer Design A over Design B is useful.
Knowing why they prefer it is much more useful.
PickFu requires respondents to explain their choices in writing.
That means the inventor receives more than a popularity contest.
You might discover that customers prefer Design A because it looks easier to clean.
Maybe they think Design B looks cheap.
Maybe they misunderstand a feature completely.
Maybe they love a benefit you barely considered important.
Those explanations are actionable.
A yes-or-no answer tells you what happened.
A written explanation can tell you what to change next.
Ask the Right People
One of Noah’s favorite things about the platform is the ability to target respondents.
If you are developing a product for dog owners, feedback from people who do not own dogs may be much less useful.
If you are creating a premium product, you may want to understand how higher-income customers react.
If your product is specifically intended for mothers with young children, that audience matters more than a random collection of people standing near you at a coffee shop.
This is one reason casually asking friends and family can be misleading.
They may not represent your market.
They also know you.
That relationship can influence how honestly they respond.
A stranger in your target demographic has no emotional reason to protect your feelings.
That can be uncomfortable.
It can also be extremely valuable.
Research Can Be Iterative
Perhaps the biggest change created by inexpensive, fast research is that you do not have to wait until the end of product development to use it.
Historically, formal consumer research was expensive enough that companies might conduct it only after significant development had already occurred.
When a research question costs $15, $50, or a few hundred dollars instead of tens of thousands, you can ask questions repeatedly.
Test a product concept.
Learn something.
Modify the design.
Test again.
Change the package.
Test again.
Try a different price.
Test again.
That turns market research into an iterative design tool.
Instead of asking consumers whether they like the finished product, you can let consumer feedback influence how the product becomes finished in the first place.
Test Small Decisions Too
Not every research question has to determine the fate of the entire invention.
Justin explains that PickFu is also used for small decisions:
Fonts.
Colors.
Arrows.
Marketing copy.
Images.
Store listings.
Logo variations.
These may seem trivial individually, but dozens of small decisions collectively shape how customers experience a product.
Fast feedback allows teams to test those choices without turning each one into a major research initiative.
Even large consumer-products companies use this kind of approach for decisions that are too small to justify sending through their formal consumer-insights departments.
That is a powerful clue for inventors.
If billion-dollar companies find value in validating small decisions, a startup with far less room for error probably should too.
Price and Market Are Great Questions to Test
Noah identifies two especially valuable areas for inventors:
Is the price right?
And:
Is the market right?
Inventors frequently begin with assumptions about both.
“This is a $29.99 product.”
“This is for busy moms.”
“This feature is the reason people will buy it.”
Maybe.
But those are hypotheses until customers validate them.
Research may reveal that the target market will pay more than expected.
Or less.
It may reveal that a different demographic finds the product far more compelling.
It may reveal that the feature you spent the most money developing barely matters while a secondary feature is the real purchase driver.
That is the kind of information that can reshape an entire product strategy.
Test Your Product Against Competitors
Justin recommends comparing your concept directly against existing products.
Put your design beside the top competitors and ask the target audience which they prefer and why.
That can reveal:
- Where your product appears stronger
- Where competitors have an advantage
- Which benefits customers actually notice
- Whether your differentiation is obvious
- Whether your packaging communicates value
- Whether the product looks credible in the category
Inventors naturally view their own products through the lens of everything they know about them.
Customers see a shelf—or a search-results page—full of alternatives.
Your product has to win in that environment.
Competitive testing helps you see that environment more realistically.
Ask: “What Do You Think This Is?”
One of the simplest research questions discussed in the episode may also be one of the most powerful.
An agency had a client whose packaging was not clearly communicating the product.
So they showed consumers a picture and asked:
“What do you think this is?”
People could not figure it out.
That is brutally useful information.
The company may have spent weeks debating fonts, colors, messaging, and branding while overlooking the most basic question:
Can a customer tell what we are selling?
Inventors should use this kind of first-impression testing more often.
Show someone the product without explaining it.
What do they think it does?
Who do they think it is for?
What problem do they think it solves?
What price would they expect?
Their answers may be very different from yours.
Get Out of Your Own Head
Justin’s broad advice to entrepreneurs is to get out of their own heads.
Whether you use a research platform, talk to customers at a store, conduct interviews, or use another method, you need outside feedback.
Founders become immersed in their own products.
That creates blind spots.
Something that feels obvious after six months of development may be completely confusing to someone encountering it for six seconds.
Outside perspectives expose those blind spots.
Sometimes the feedback will be wrong.
Sometimes a respondent will interpret something through a lens that does not really apply to your target customer.
That does not make the exercise useless.
As Noah points out, even strange feedback can trigger a useful idea—much like an odd suggestion during brainstorming.
You do not have to obey every response.
You do need to hear what the market is telling you.
Templates Make Research Less Intimidating
Early-stage inventors may not even know what “market research” means, much less how to design a good survey.
That can make the process intimidating.
Justin explains that PickFu created templates around common jobs entrepreneurs are trying to accomplish.
Instead of staring at a blank box wondering what question to ask, users can begin with proven formats for testing product concepts, listings, images, packaging, and other decisions.
That lowers another barrier.
Accessible research is not merely about lowering the price.
It is also about making the process understandable enough that a non-researcher can actually use it.
Avoid Analysis Paralysis
When feedback becomes inexpensive and easy, there is an obvious temptation:
Ask everything.
Then ask it again.
Then create twelve more variations and ask about those.
Data is valuable, but product development still requires decisions.
The purpose of research is to reduce uncertainty—not eliminate every imaginable uncertainty before moving forward.
Use feedback to make better decisions.
Do not use it as an excuse to postpone decisions forever.
There is always another question you could ask.
At some point, you have to build the product.
The Product Genius Take
Inventors do not need to guess as much as they think they do.
You can test your assumptions.
Ask your target customers what they value.
Compare your concept against competitors.
Test pricing.
Test packaging.
Test features.
Ask people what they think the product even is before you explain it.
And pay close attention to why they answer the way they do.
The goal is not to surrender your product vision to a poll.
The goal is to combine your expertise and creativity with information from the people you eventually expect to buy the product.
That is how good ideas get sharper.
And if you are still unsure which version to choose?
As Justin and the PickFu team would say: go PickFu it.
Or, read the full transcript here:
Announcer Lady
Do you want to be a successful inventor entrepreneur? Struggling to get your product from idea to market? Well, you've come to the right place. Welcome to Product Genius, the down-to-earth podcast that explores important topics about inventing and launching new products. Noah McNeely is your trusted guide. With more than 20 years of product launch experience, he's here to help you on your journey to become a product genius. Let's get started. Here's your slightly annoying co-host, Steven Julian.
Steven Julian
Hey, that's my line. Yes, it's your slightly annoying co-host, Steven Julian. Welcome to another, hopefully one day soon, award-winning edition of Product Genius. Yes, we are coming to you live with a studio audience, no less, from the lair of Product Quick Start. With me, as always, to my right is the intrepid producer, Jody Smith. And across the table from me, he who must be listened to. Noah McNeely.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, good afternoon.
Steven Julian
Yeah, it is afternoon as we record this. And we're not alone. I said we already have a studio audience and we've got a guest on the show. We do.
Noah McNeely
So we have my intern is here who prefers not to be named on the podcast.
Steven Julian
Yes, yes. To protect the innocent.
Noah McNeely
Yes.
Steven Julian
And if you hear loud laughter in the background, it's something else. It's not the show. It's something that he found funny. But yeah, no, we're. yeah, I was excited to meet your new intern. Always, you know, always. Finding new young talent and helping them in their journey. And you also help people bring their products to market. And you also make great connections with other people who help other people with their areas of genius. And that's why we've got Justin Chen of PickFu.com. Justin, welcome to the show.
Justin Chen
Hey, Steven. Hey, Noah. Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely.
Steven Julian
So PickFu. P-I-C-K-F-U dot com. Tell everybody about PickFu and what you guys do.
Justin Chen
Sure. It's a do-it-yourself consumer research platform. You could think of it as a digital focus group where you can ask your target audience questions about your ideas, your product concepts, anything that you want to get feedback on. So, for example, if you're working on a new logo, you could put up a couple of different logo designs. And what's going to happen is we're going to go out and we're going to find people and we're. going to pay them to answer which one do they like. They'll choose which one. They'll give written explanations why and demographic information.
And this is all super fast and incredibly helpful for any entrepreneur that's trying to make a decision and goes through doubt, self-doubt about if they are making the right decision. And we built it as a tool for ourselves many, many years ago.
Steven Julian
Noah, as the captain of this show and as in the introduction, as everybody knows, you've been doing this for a little while. I think I know why you wanted to have Justin on the show, but tell everybody about why what he does is so important, interesting, unique, different, new. Kind of talk about what intrigues you about PickFu.
Noah McNeely
Yes, I'll use a word I use occasionally, and that is that democratize. I feel like what PickFu does is they democratize access to real market research. And unlike just going around town and asking 10 people what do they think, PickFu actually does the hard work of slicing and dicing the population to get just the right respondents for what you're after. And they do it at a really low cost. And, you know, Justin mentioned DIY. When I looked at the site, and Justin, this is one of the things I'm super excited about, is it's not only DIY, but you make it really, really easy to be DIY.
And I'm sure you'll talk about that as we go forward. But yeah, I... I was really impressed with PickFu from the moment I saw it.
Steven Julian
Now, Justin, as people are listening to this show, I'm sure many of them, as we're starting this, they've already gone to PickFu.com. But I wonder, I'm going to put you a little bit on the spot here and test your verbal skills. Kind of walk us through. If I'm an entrepreneur, an inventor, I've got a product and I'm working on something. What is it? Walk us through what it looks like. How does someone start and what can they expect when they first go to PickFu and maybe the first time they use it?
Justin Chen
Sure. So I'll point out, first of all, that it's free to create an account and everything is paid as you go. So there's no subscriptions that you have to have to use the platform. So definitely just go to. PickFu.com, log in, and what you're going to do is you're going to create a poll. What we do are these very simple one question surveys, so to speak. And so if you go create a poll, you'll ask a question, you'll type in a question and you could say something like, you know, what do you think about this idea?
Maybe you want to target moms and you want to say like, hey, if you're a mom and you've got kids, do you ever have this issue? And then what you could do is you could describe the solution you're building. You could put up a concept image or something like that. Maybe even a video of something that you're planning to build and you choose your audience. So you could choose from 15 to 500 people. You could add different attributes such as, you know, like I said, mother or dog owners or coffee drinkers or anything like that.
And from there, you just you hit checkout and you pay. It starts at a dollar per response. So 15 responses would be $15 and it scales from there. And you just hit go. And after you pay, we. immediately go out and start finding people. So don't leave the page because within a matter of minutes, you'll start seeing responses come in. And usually within 15-30 minutes, we'll have one of these polls done for you. And so it's super exciting. Grab your coffee, just watch the results come in. And you're going to read through actual written responses of what they respond to your product concept about.
Kind of in a nutshell, once you're done, we have some AI summary as well of the responses. So, you know, a lot of times you might be asking 50 or 100 responses, and that's a lot for any human to parse through. But it's a really good use case for AI to summarize the themes and the takeaways for you to figure out how you can improve your product or whatever it is that you're getting feedback on.
Steven Julian
Justin, I've got a pivot question, but before I get to that, I do want to ask. if I do this and I do this survey, you talked about if I ask for 50 or 100 responses, that might be hard to go through. However, I may be wanting to go. through them multiple times. Apart from the AI stuff, do I get an actual file that I've got specifically what people answered? Is there opportunities for people to add? Free answers of a sentence or two in response that I then get and can read through?
Justin Chen
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So you'll see all the raw responses. Everyone is required actually to write a written explanation of why they made their choice. And so that is actually where most of the valuable insight is because they're explaining their choices and usually giving you... Advice or direction for what to do next.
Noah McNeely
Yeah, for people early on, well, at any point in the business development process, product development process, I think that's, you know, it's not as important to know, do you like this, yes or no, but why they like it, what do they like about it, or what do they not like about it, because that's actually actionable at that point.
Justin Chen
That's right.
Steven Julian
So, Justin, my pivot question was going to be this, as I'm someone who's coming and looking for these responses, and I'm glad you kind of mentioned AI help in cataloging or refining those responses, kind. of giving us some ideas. In the age of AI and bots and people going, well, I mean, obviously you're getting real people to answer, which I then think leads to the legitimate question of, okay, how is PickFu finding these people? Give us an idea of the universe of people responding to these questions.
Justin Chen
Yeah, so we tap into the same consumer research panels that any large CPG would do. So if Kraft or Procter & Gamble were to do a long-form market research, They would work with a market research consultant who would create a long-form survey. They would then go reach out to one of these panel suppliers where there's people who are being incentivized to answer these surveys. And then they would collect all that data. They would analyze and clean all that data. And then they would report it back to the client, which might be Kraft or Procter & Gamble.
So what we try to do is we tap into all those same suppliers, but in a programmatic way. And we have our own layers of data quality and audience targeting on top of all of that. So we're trying to take away all. that expertise that's needed to formulate the surveys and source the survey responses and then also to clean the data, which is actually one of the hardest parts you can imagine when you're paying people on the internet to answer things. So we have quite a rigorous process for making sure that the data is high quality.
Bring it all to you in a very quick way so that you don't have to interact with any kind of market research consultant. You're doing it from the comfort of your home. You're not talking to any actual strangers. We're both introverted engineers, and that's why we built this. We didn't want to actually go to a coffee shop to get a feedback, and so we can do it from the comfort of our home.
Noah McNeely
I like you a lot.
Steven Julian
So, Noah, I'm going to bring you in and kind of ask you a question. Kind of how things have changed over the last 20, 25 years. Obviously, the speed of technology, the speed of being able to get these answers. I think it's pretty obvious. people listening, long-time listeners this show recognize the value of this. For you, as someone who's. been in the business for a while, besides just the speed and the lower cost.
Noah McNeely
Well, I think the speed and the lower cost lead to other things that make it important. I mean, you know, what Justin just described, it's really something that. Procter & Gamble and these other companies, they would pay tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars to access this level of sliced and diced data. And the way PickFu is doing it to where you could do, let's say you just want a small answer to a small question, spend $15, $50, $100, whatever it is, you can get that. And because it's accessible and because it's instantaneous almost, and because it's cheaper than anything else, You can do this over and over again.
So let's say you're really struggling or really just want to dial in something on your product or your logo or whatever. This can be an iterative process the way PickFu does it. And I've never seen anything that lets you do that that way before.
Justin Chen
Yeah, no, I mean, I think you're really hitting the nail on the head that the speed really unlocks a new way of using. consumer insights because in the past, this process was so expensive and laborious that you would kind of only do it at... The end of a large process and you wouldn't really be testing or gathering feedback along the development process. But now you can iterate on almost every single decision. So whether it's fonts and colors and should I put an arrow here or not? All these small decisions could be tested, helping you refine the product.
By the time you get to the end, it's going to be completely polished. And what's actually really interesting from what we've seen now, Is that a lot of these large CPG companies that do have consumer insights teams, we're also getting a lot of usage within them because they have team members. Maybe it's the marketing managers or the designers or the people doing social media. They don't have access to the consumer insights team because they just want to get feedback on smaller things that they're trying to put out. Those don't warrant such a large research project.
Noah McNeely
And they don't have to get upper management's approval to spend $300 or $500.
Steven Julian
They can take it out of their budget, right? It's just a line item in their budget and something instead of... Yeah, I love that. So the big boys are coming to you and utilizing what you have kind of tapped into. Noah, I did want to ask you this one specific question. As someone who helps people bring their product to market, what are the top one or two questions that as soon as you... Matt, Justin, Sal, PickFu, you're like, holy cow, I'm going to use this. My clients need to use this.
What are some of the top questions you would be asking?
Noah McNeely
Oh, my gosh. There's so many different ones.
Steven Julian
I told you to pick two.
Noah McNeely
Is the price right and is the market right? I think those are a couple of big ones. Am I targeting the right market? And with PickFu's system, you can select, okay, I only want these answers to come from people that make $100,000 a year or more or whatever that is. And you can see, okay, well, what would that market pay for this? And is it right? Is it wrong? Is it, et cetera. You may find that your market that you went in with the. preconceived notion is not the right market for your product at all.
And I think PickFu can help you do that. Aside from all this stuff, is this the right feature? Does it even need to do this? Am I putting too much emphasis on this when really the people want to buy it because of B and I'm putting a lot of money into A and nobody cares about A?
Steven Julian
So Justin, I was going to ask you, I asked Noah from where he's coming from with helping people bring their product to market and the different points in that story that he's getting involved in. I was going to ask you, because obviously the scope of how this is being used goes far beyond product development, but I did want to ask two slightly annoying, slightly comedic questions. Does PickFu have any good water cooler stories, coffee maker stories of, do you see this question that got asked? That is so cool. That is so interesting.
That's so unique. I never thought PickFu would be used to ask this question. Is there any of those you can share on the air? And I didn't pre-ask that question ahead. of time. So if you can't, I totally understand.
Noah McNeely
No HIPAA violations.
Steven Julian
Yeah, exactly.
Justin Chen
Yeah, we definitely see a lot of... Interesting questions and then also content that's being tested. So some interesting uses are baby testing, baby name testing. So, you know, you can't decide. And actually, my co-founder, John, he had a clever way of doing it and he was having a boy. And so he asked the audience, which name is easier to make fun of and give me your best shot, essentially. So, you know, taking advantage of the written explanations and then having people, you know, I think he targeted males in this case, to come up with the, you know, the best way that they can make fun of the name.
And so, you know, at least you're going into it eyes wide open, right? That's fantastic.
Steven Julian
That's awesome.
Justin Chen
So that's a fun one. And then we have all kinds of interesting things that are being tested. We have a lot of adult... Products and novels and book covers are a big thing. So we see a lot of steamy covers there.
Steven Julian
Have I gone too far with this? Yeah, I like that.
Justin Chen
Yeah, a lot of game characters and a lot of interesting game character designs from all around the world. So those are all really interesting because they want to push the envelope. And I think what's cool about PickFu is that it allows your creative team to... Maybe go a step beyond that they would normally do because they can get the feedback on it and feel a little bit safe about exploring different ideas.
Steven Julian
We are speaking with Justin Chen. He is one of the founders of PickFu.com. And Justin, one last little for fun question. You know, there's a point in the year where people who like to watch the World Series of Poker and what I have always found interesting is one of the commercials. Almost every commercial break, they're like, hey, come gamble here. By the way, if you have a gambling problem, make sure and contact this number. I'm wondering if the development of PickFu and the launch of PickFu has potentially created a, hey, do you have a problem asking too many questions?
You want to get the answer to every possible thing you could ever think of. Do you guys ever go like, this? one user might be overusing it. Holy cow. Do you have to go, are you sure you're not spending too much money on this? Don't go bankrupt just asking questions. I would imagine the paralysis of analysis could be one of the dangers of something like PickFu. Have I gone too far with that question? What user has asked the most questions? I guess that's the question I'm asking.
Justin Chen
Yeah, luckily, we haven't seen this from any individual. So I haven't been concerned for any bankruptcy, but we've seen a lot of. what we do see is a lot of very data oriented organizations. So, you know, I think what we find is that when an organization has an engineer as a founder, they're typically much more data driven in their decision making. So, for example, DuckDuckGo, the privacy search engine is one of our. Oldest and was one of our earliest customers. And they use PickFu throughout their organization on all the different things from ads to UX to marketing copy, like all over the place.
Because I think they've instilled such a data-driven culture that, hey, we need to... If we're going to make a decision on something. and there are some different variations that we're thinking about, we should have some kind of data to back up where we're going to go with. And so I think that's really inspiring to see. as engineers ourselves, we try to do that as well. So every time we have our designer create a few different variations, of course, we'll talk about it internally, but it always comes down to why don't we just pick through it and see what the audience thinks?
Because strangers always bring up some kind of interesting point or objection that you probably haven't thought of. And even if you want to disregard it, at least you're aware of it.
Noah McNeely
Everyone looks at things through their own lens and sometimes getting that, like you said, even if it's a weird lens that really doesn't apply, just like we brainstorming, sometimes it leads to an idea you wouldn't have thought of otherwise. One thing I wanted to draw some attention to just for the benefit of our audience, because a lot of people in our audience are very early in their process. Some of them maybe even never really heard the term market research or what. it means. They might be even a little bit intimidated about using PickFu.
But one of the things I loved about your website, and you and I talked about this before, is you have those various templates. So you really do make it easy. If someone's like, I don't even know what question to ask, you do have some great examples there. I don't even know how to show a picture to get feedback. And what does that look like? You've got great examples that people can almost drag and drop and plug and play to make that happen.
Justin Chen
Yeah, that's right. I mean, one of the hardest things I think about entering consumer research or gathering feedback from people is knowing what question to ask. And that was a hesitation that we heard from customers early on. So we did build out a template library that's more attuned to what jobs you're trying to do, right? Oh, I want to get feedback on my product. I want to improve my image on my store listing. I want to get feedback on my store listing. These are all things that you're trying to do.
And so what we've done is. we've come up with questions that we've seen from our customers, actually, and kind of created the best practice question, maybe set some parameters around the survey for you as well, just to get you started so that you're not paralyzed by all the decisions that you have to make when setting one of these up. And it leads to a lot of discovery from our customers as well, because then they discover like, oh, wow, I didn't know I could. One of my favorite ones that I saw one of our agency customers do was, what do you think this is?
And they were working with a client who had a product packaging that just wasn't very clear what it was. And so they just took a picture of it, literally just a picture of it, threw it up, asked the question, what do you think this is? And no one could figure it out. And so I think that's just another one of those things where... As entrepreneurs or founders, we all have been way too close to the product that we're building. And we assume that everyone knows what it is that we're building and we'll see. a need for it.
Noah McNeely
I imagine the other side of that story is this agency has probably been trying to talk that client out of that particular package for like three weeks. And then, all right, we'll go do research and we'll show them that nobody knows what it means.
Steven Julian
Yeah, exactly.
Noah McNeely
That's awesome.
Steven Julian
And I would just tell everybody, again, if they go to pickfood.com, and it's such an easy website. First of all, sign up for free, right? So there's a free, you know, you can join for free. You can sample for about as clear and transparent pricing. But right across the top, there's how it works, the different industries, the products. There's examples. There's resources. I mean, you make it about as easy to kind of get into this and get started as it possibly can be. I do want to ask one other question.
It is pickfu.com. Where did the FU come from?
Justin Chen
So initially it was for the mastery of something. So FU being the suffix that kind of indicates that. So, you know, it was a service that was very good at picking. It also works with pick for you. So we want. to, you know, it picks well for you. And then I think it works well as a verb. And so, you know, our team and a lot of our customers have taken to just pick-fooing it. So if you don't know what to do, go pick-foo it. I like that. Yeah, that's the back history.
Steven Julian
I like that. I like that. So it's become a verb. Pick-foo that.
Justin Chen
That's right.
Steven Julian
So I like it. So, Justin, you know, I think we've got to... And it's funny, we set up this interview and we could probably keep talking, but because this is so straightforward, because this is such a very great solution to a specific need, I think we've covered it as in-depth as we need to get to. And everybody needs to pick through it.
Noah McNeely
Well, is there anything else you want to say to the audience? Who, me?
Steven Julian
Oh, I got tons I want to say. I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to Justin.
Noah McNeely
Sorry.
Justin Chen
No, I mean, I think I just want the audience to start getting out of their own heads, whether they use a platform like they actually go into a coffee shop or a. Home Depot or wherever they're hoping to sell their products and actually talk to their customers. We do that a lot ourselves. We try to talk to our customers as much as possible. And it's always incredibly insightful, even when you think you know what's going on. Definitely gather feedback. Test your product against your competition would be another piece of advice.
So you could test your product design against the top three competitors out there and get a sense for why people might be choosing competition over yours. So that's always really helpful. But yeah, give it a try at pickfood.com. It's free to create an account. There's a free onboarding poll in there too. So you can see what it's like before even spending a dollar.
Steven Julian
By the way, the other side, the people who answer the questions, if you want to judge things, if you want your opinion to be heard, you can go to PickFu and basically sign up to become part of the panel, correct?
Justin Chen
So you can't sign up to be part of the panel because we work with third-party suppliers for that. Yeah, you can let us know if you're interested. We do. keep track of people who are interested. At some point, we will create our own panel, but for now, we like keeping those two sides of the house separate.
Steven Julian
I can totally see that. I can totally see that. That makes a lot of sense. And actually, I'm glad you answered the question that way because I think it makes the- You can get biased in the process.
Justin Chen
otherwise. Yeah, exactly.
Steven Julian
Well, yeah. I mean, I know I'm someone and I'm sure there are others who are like, I- I really want to judge other people. I'm so good at it. So, no. So, Justin, so I've already kind of given the website. Is there anything else anybody should know other than, hey, just go to pickfood.com and easily sign up for free? Is that anything else in addition to that that you want to give them? as far as contact information?
Justin Chen
No, that's good. You can find me on LinkedIn if you want to connect personally. And we also have a customer success team that will answer any live chat. Questions or you could also hop on the call with them. So it is a self-service software, but, you. know, sometimes you need a little bit of handholding and we're here for that.
Steven Julian
So instead of Googling it, go PickFu it, right?
Justin Chen
That's right. PickFu.com.
Steven Julian
Justin Chen from PickFu.com. Thank you so much for being on the show today.
Noah McNeely
Thank you, Justin.
Justin Chen
Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. Yeah, absolutely.
Steven Julian
Noah, I love the guests. I always love the guests you bring on and hear this one. I mean, Justin, just it's such an obvious need.
Noah McNeely
And it's a way to get that feedback through PickFu without being accused of being a stalker by walking around Home Depot or Starbucks asking people their opinions. Kicked out for trespassing and things like that.
Steven Julian
And I was half joking with the question of could people take it too far and ask too many questions. But as I began to think about my own question and I scolded myself internally because…. You're saving yourself so much money from a process that the standard entrepreneur inventor had no way to be involved in without spending thousands and thousands of dollars.
Noah McNeely
If you're the kind of person that's going to ask a thousand questions before you launch a product, this is the best way. to do it.
Steven Julian
Exactly. And it would still be. And I loved that. the big boys and some of those big companies that spend tens of thousands of dollars to create their own market research. They use their budget to go pick-foo it when they need to get something a little just more refined for what they're looking for. Ask the questions you want. Get your answers in minutes. Be able to go through the data, and there's just somewhat a great value. So thank you to Justin for being here. Four, and then Noah, the other thing people do besides pick-foo in it, they need to PQS it.
Noah McNeely
That sounds weird.
Steven Julian
Productquickstart.com, contact us. Noah can help you with your stuff. Please don't put in, I've got an idea. Call me, fill it out, send. The music is playing. Jody's ready to go, apparently. For our needs to get out of here as soon as possible, Jody Smith, producer, and for Noah McNeely, this is Steven Julian saying, we will catch you next time. After you pick Foo-It, come to Product Genius.