💭 Trends #0053 — Structured Interviews

Structured interviews consist of asking the same questions to different people. Then collecting and sharing answers with your audience.

This method is used to build newsletters, communities, funds, DaaS companies, and more.

Why it matters

• Structured interviews power scalable media companies.
• Standardization makes it easier to find patterns of success and failure.
• Borrowing trust, credibility and affinity are fast ways to build leverage.

Readers want insights from interesting people. Guests want sales, backlinks and followers. Brands want scalable content.

Enter structured interviews.

Players

• Indie Hackers --- Bootstrapped Founders
• Failory --- Failed Startups
• No Code MBA --- No-Code Businesses
• Podium Worthy --- "People worth listening to"
• The Top --- Entrepreneur Income Reports
• Compound --- Writers
• No CS Degree --- Self-Taught and Bootcamp Developers

Predictions

• Tools like Shortly will give small teams more leverage without the need to hire.
• No-Code apps will use structured-interview-like interfaces to help you build by answering questions. See Headlime's AI-powered landing page builder.

Opportunities

• Make it a no-brainer for guests. Minimize the time required and answer "What's in it for me?" Collect and share success stories.
• Build systems to scale. Document and delegate your outreach, collection and distribution process.
• Add a personal touch. Tell guests why you want to interview them. Weave details into standardized questions. i.e. "What motivated you to get started with Thankbox?"
• Build a Data as a Service company. Nathan Latka pulls revenue metrics from podcast episodes, adds them to a database and sells access.

Key lessons

• Borrow trust, credibility and attention to build leverage. Structured interviews tether your brand to others. Unstructured interviews do the same but slower.
• Think laterally. This hiring method is being used by funds to evaluate deals, SaaS for top-of-funnel and communities to attract members.

Haters

"Structured interviews are impersonal."

Semi-structured is an option. Work backward based on your goals. Less structure equals less scale.

"I'll miss the opportunity to ask interesting questions."

There's no free lunch. The world is full of trade-offs. You can have several rounds of questions. But scalability is lost.

"I'm convinced. But what if everyone starts doing this?"

Links

1. Who's doing standardized interviews? - The tweet behind this report.
2. How 150 Personal Emails Sparked a Community of 60,000 Entrepreneurs - Courtland Allen used structured interviews to build a community of tens of thousands of founders.
3. Crowdsourcing - The powerful force behind structured interviews.

Do you use structured interviews in your business? Share your insight in the comments.