Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

What founders use most, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

1. Hansen runs interviews for her own bootstrapped products and talks candidly about the emotional side founders underrate:... Inside Intercom Podcast · ~40 min · Starting Up How to deploy empathy to get the most out of customer interviews Michele Hansen
2. Wunker's Jobs to Be Done framework gets an Indian audience through this YourStory piece, useful if you want the underlying... YourStory Article · ~8 min read · Starting Up Unlocking customer-centric innovation with author Stephen Wunker Stephen Wunker
3. Wilcox tackles this exact question head on, and rejects the tempting stop when you stop learning something new answer since you... Customer Dev Labs Article · Starting Up How Many Customers Should You Interview? Justin Wilcox
4. A companion piece to the article above, this one focuses on the practical am I done yet moment inside a single discovery... Customer Dev Labs Article · Starting Up When Are You Done Interviewing Customers? Justin Wilcox
5. This is the academic study behind the qualitative research idea of saturation, the point past which new interviews stop adding... Field Methods (Sage) Article · Starting Up How Many Interviews Are Enough? An Experiment with Data Saturation and Variability Greg Guest, Arwen Bunce, Laura Johnson
6. A concise, practical primer on structuring an interview, from writing questions to avoiding leading language to taking useful... Nielsen Norman Group Article · Starting Up User Interviews 101 Maria Rosala and Kara Pernice
7. Zhuo, former Facebook VP of Product Design, gives seven specific questions for interviewing a prospective user, moving from... The Looking Glass Essay · Starting Up The Looking Glass: You Cannot Teach Wisdom Julie Zhuo
8. Video · Starting Up How to Interview Your Customers, Live Demo Justin Wilcox
9. A ready-made template for drafting a comparable, reusable question set across every interview, which matters because you can... Notion Template · Starting Up Customer Interview Question Generator Notion
10. This is a straightforward, tactical rundown of where to source interviewees when your customer base is zero: relevant... Grow and Convert Article · ~12 min read · Starting Up How to Conduct Customer Interviews (Even When You Don't Have Customers) Thomas Carney
11. Once you've found someone willing to talk, this thread collects the actual questions other founders use, crowdsourced from... Indie Hackers Thread · ~5 min read · Starting Up Top Questions to Ask Customers During Their Interviews Indie Hackers
12. A specific, first-person account of finding an audience on Reddit from nothing, including which subreddits worked and how the... Indie Hackers Thread · ~8 min read · Starting Up How I Got My First 100 Users via Reddit Indie Hackers
13. When your personal network and community outreach genuinely run dry, this is the paid fallback: a recruiting panel of people... userinterviews.com Tool · Starting Up User Interviews userinterviews.com
14. This is the most exhaustive single list we found of concrete channels for sourcing interviewees, from personal network to... mfishbein.com Article · ~15 min read · Starting Up Customer Development: 14 Best Ways to Find Customers to Interview Mike Fishbein
15. Meesho's co-founder describes how the company's first idea (a hyperlocal shop-discovery app) failed and how the real business... Y Combinator Startup Library Video · Starting Up On Starting and Scaling Meesho Vidit Aatrey
16. Savoia's pretotyping approach forces you to define, before you show anyone anything, exactly what a real reaction would look... pretotyping.org Book · ~80 pages · Starting Up Pretotype It Alberto Savoia
17. If a cofounder or teammate is going to sit in on the session, this is the two-minute brief you send them beforehand. It spells... Nielsen Norman Group Article · Starting Up Observer Guidelines for Usability Research Nielsen Norman Group
18. This names biases beyond the obvious one: task-selection bias (users assume whatever you ask them to find must exist), social... MeasuringU Article · Starting Up 9 Biases in Usability Testing Jeff Sauro
19. Useful once you've run a few in-person sessions and want to test with more people than you can personally sit with. It's honest... Maze Article · Starting Up Moderated vs. Unmoderated Usability Testing: Which One is Right for You? Maze
20. A short video showing exactly what neutral prompting sounds like when a participant goes quiet mid-task. Watching the actual... Nielsen Norman Group Video · ~5 min · Starting Up Help Users Think Aloud Nielsen Norman Group
21. Shows an actual demonstration of a facilitator's opening script, the part of the session most founders wing and accidentally... Nielsen Norman Group Video · ~6 min · Starting Up Introducing a Usability Test to the Participant Nielsen Norman Group
22. A ready-to-use script and structure for the five-act interview, so you're not writing your test flow from scratch. Having the... Design Sprint Kit (Google) Template · Starting Up Conduct a 5-Act Interview Design Sprint Kit (Google)
23. A simple tool for a narrow but useful version of unbiased reaction testing: show someone a screen for five seconds, then ask... Lyssna Tool · Starting Up Five Second Testing Lyssna
24. Written for solo and early founders rather than VC backed teams, this is blunt about why family and friends are usually the... Indie Hackers Article · Starting Up How To Validate a Business Idea Indie Hackers

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