User research for startups: why we're backing you

Before myUsersInsight, we worked in startups. Elliott, our co-founder and product designer, tells it best:

“We were building a health app, and we needed to know the basics. Would people even share their health information with an app? Did they care enough about their health to use one? Which age groups would? We never found out. First, there was no money for research. Second, even if there had been, we had no idea how to find the right people. We'd have been stopping strangers who might not fit the study at all.

“So we talked to the people we could reach: the doctors we were building the app for. They were our clients and our investors, secondary users at best. The people who'd actually use the app were nowhere to be found. We finished it, went to market, and it didn't work.”

“At another startup, we built a marketplace for pharmacies: an automated supply chain where a pharmacy raises a purchase order, a wholesaler in Accra processes it, and the medicine is delivered. Simple, right? Then COVID hit, and with the lockdowns it sounded even more logical. Surely pharmacies would struggle to get medicines in.

“We built it without talking to a single real user. We spoke to friends who owned pharmacies, and we built it for them. The wholesalers, who the whole platform depended on, were never involved. Not once did we visit a wholesaler in Accra to see how they worked, whether this fitted their day, or how the politics of the pharmaceutical industry played out.

“We built the system end to end, went to market, and found out they had no problem. They were already doing all of this on WhatsApp. We had nothing that made it worth paying us a fee. We tried pivots and added features, and after years of work and investment, the company folded.”

“Sometimes users don't know what they want until you show them. But users also ignore products that ignore them. You can launch with free data and sign-up promos, and the dashboard lights up for a few days. Then the promo ends, and the numbers drop.

“I've always wanted to talk to real users, from the first idea to launch. Mostly, I couldn't. In Ghana there was no local platform to reach the right people easily, so we built in our rooms. Many designers and researchers here don't even know how to start, or that research needs a budget at all. We struggled, and it hurt.”

That frustration is why myUsersInsight exists, and why supporting startups isn't a side project for us. It's the reason we started.

Skipping research feels like saving money. It rarely is. Every week spent building the wrong feature is a week of salaries, runway and attention that doesn't come back.

• A feature built on a guess can sit unused, then needs rework once real users find it confusing.
• Investors ask how you know people want it. “We talked to 12 customers last month” is a far stronger answer than “we believe”.
• Customers who feel heard stay. Customers who feel ignored leave quietly.

A few short conversations before you build cost far less than a rebuild after you launch.

You don't need a research team, a lab or a big budget. Five people usually show you the biggest problems in a product. A 30-minute call with the right person can change what you build next.

What small teams lack is usually time and access, not skill. You know your product better than anyone. What's hard is finding real people outside your own network, getting them to turn up, and paying them fairly without a spreadsheet. That's the part we take off your plate.

Early-stage startups can apply to our startup programme. If you're accepted, you get:

• Up to GHS 350 in study credit to pay participant rewards. That's enough for five people on a short task test.
• No service charge for 6 months, on every study you run, with credit or without.
• Help writing your first study: describe what you want to learn, and AI drafts the study with you. You check every step.

At checkout you tick Pay from my startup fund, and the credit comes off what you pay. A study paid with credit goes live as soon as you publish it. Credit isn't money: it can't be withdrawn or swapped for cash, it runs out on the date shown, and it can't pay people connected to your team.

Two things. Run a study within 30 days of joining, so the credit goes to real research while it's still useful. And let us publish a short case study about what you learned. We write it with you, and you approve it before it goes out.

We ask for the case study because the best way to convince the next founder that research is worth it is to show them a team like theirs that did it.

The startups that get the most from research don't do one big study a year. They talk to a few users all the time. A simple rhythm that works for small teams:

• Before each big decision, write down the one question you need answered.
• Talk to five people about it, on calls or in a short task test.
• Have the people who build the product watch at least one session. Seeing a user struggle changes minds faster than any report.
• Share the highlights with the whole team, then decide.

On myUsersInsight, every session is recorded and transcribed. You mark highlights, group them into themes and share a highlight reel, so the whole team hears users in their own words.

The programme is for early-stage startups, and for now it's open to teams based in Ghana, where our participants are. Cohort 1 has 5 places.

1. On our website, go to the Startup programme section and choose Apply to the programme. Log in or sign up as a researcher first.
2. Tell us your startup's name, website or app, LinkedIn profile, stage, what you're building and what you want to learn.
3. Send it. We check your website loads and look at your LinkedIn profile, and we may ask for a short call.

We reply within 5 working days. If it isn't a yes this time, we tell you why, and you can apply again later.

We want more products in Africa built with their users, not just for them. That starts with the small teams building them today, the way we used to.

If you're a founder who knows you should be talking to users but can't find the people or the budget, we built this for you. Tell us what you want to learn, and let's find out together.