What would be the one piece of advice for user research if you are given tight budget and time constraints?

• Get creative! Need insights quickly to inform product development, build a survey and put some dollars behind it on Facebook, or have the company share with friends and family that fit into the ICP. 

• Determine how the insights will impact decision making. Have a deep understanding of how if you know the answer to X, how it will inform Y. If it won’t change decision-making or the output, revisit if you have the right research or if you even need to do it in the first place. Often I find that if we hold ourselves to be stricter on understanding how the research will impact or inform the outcome, it will be more productive. 

There are trade-offs when shipping a product or project that relate to balancing speed, cost, and quality. Ultimately, you can have two, but not all three.

In this scenario, it is important to limit the risk of low quality, given you have a limited budget and time to conduct user research.

To start, determine the objective and target audience to facilitate a user research study. Then, consider 2 options for budget allocation:
Option 1: Allocate the budget to users to expedite responses, implying you will be conducting the research efforts in-house, with the development of a research guide OR
Option 2: Allocate the budget to an existing vendor and explore how they can partner to quickly deliver user research given the budget and timeframe while limiting the risk of low quality. 

Talk to your customers. I know it can be hard to get access to them via the CS team, but this will give you the best insights for people that know you and your product already for GTM and product development initiatives. Also, listening to Gong calls (in the Discovery phase especially). Set up filters for when you hear "Challenges," or "I wish I could..."