If you have a high degree of domain expertise, you don’t need to invest time learning regulations, laws, and customs. Mark Abramson, a former president of USA Cycling, hypothesized that there was a better way to get crashed cyclists better care and back on their bicycles faster.
He was quickly able to validate a problem and start building a solution. The “product” was a professional organization, Medicine of Cycling, which connects doctors, cycling teams, and athletes and hosts an annual conference. As Abramson tells it, “A lot of the credit for Medicine of Cycling goes to my wife Anna, a doctor. She was talking to a trauma surgeon at Harvard who said, ‘We get all these injured cyclists coming to the emergency room, and I think there’s an opportunity to improve their pace of recovery and the quality of care that they receive.’” When people start conducting customer development interviews, they aren’t sure what questions to ask.
But as the president of USA Cycling, Abramson had background knowledge and an existing network that allowed him to jump directly into some quick surveys. Abramson asked about how often athletes were getting injured, how much competition time they were missing, whether their competitive teams were offering insurance, and how much money they were spending.