Understand your customers

Talk to real users, define who you're for, and read the market clearly.

What founders use for understand your customers, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

  1. A deep conversation on why direct questions fail and how story-based interviews surface real behaviour. Torres names the common... Lenny's Newsletter Podcast · ~75 min Teresa Torres on how to interview customers Lenny Rachitsky and Teresa Torres In 14 answers
  2. The author of Crossing the Chasm explaining beachhead selection in plain, modern language, the fastest way to absorb the... Lenny's Podcast / Lenny's Newsletter Podcast · ~75 min Geoffrey Moore on finding your beachhead, crossing the chasm, and dominating a market Lenny Rachitsky & Geoffrey Moore In 7 answers
  3. The Zetwerk co-founder talks through choosing a hard problem in an Indian manufacturing market and when to trust customers... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · 40 min Importance of Founder Market Fit and When to Listen to Customers (ft. Amrit Acharya, Zetwerk) Prime Venture Partners In 3 answers
  4. Rob Fitzpatrick is a self-described techie who taught himself to talk to customers, and his whole point is that good research... Indie Hackers Podcast · About 1 hour The Right Way to Talk to People About Your Business with Rob Fitzpatrick (Indie Hackers Podcast #154) Rob Fitzpatrick (host Courtland Allen) In 2 answers
  5. Bob Moesta helped build the JTBD framework, and this is the most practical, founder-facing conversation on it available for... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · ~90 min The Ultimate Guide to JTBD (Bob Moesta, co-creator of the framework) Lenny Rachitsky (host), Bob Moesta (guest) In 2 answers
  6. Bob Moesta helped build the JTBD method alongside Christensen, and here he is specific about how to catch the non-functional... Inside Intercom Podcast · about 30 min Bob Moesta on Jobs-to-be-Done (Inside Intercom podcast) Bob Moesta with Intercom In 2 answers
  7. The audio version of YC's user-interview classic, ideal for founders on the go. We include it as an alternate format for the... Spotify Podcast · ~35 min How to Talk to Users with Gustaf Alstromer | Startup School Y Combinator
  8. Long-form, candid interviews with Indian founders and investors on how they actually grew, distributed and built brand, one of... The Neon Show / Neon Fund Podcast · 200+ episodes The Neon Show (100x Entrepreneur Podcast) Siddhartha Ahluwalia
  9. A leading early-stage Indian VC firm answering the questions founders wish they could ask a VC face-to-face, including how they... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · 30-50 min per episode Prime Venture Partners Podcast: Fundraising Masterclass for Founders Prime Venture Partners
  10. Arvid Kahl bootstrapped and sold a SaaS solo, and now publishes the most practical ongoing guidance for one-person and... thebootstrappedfounder.com Podcast · long The Bootstrapped Founder (blog & podcast) Arvid Kahl
  11. This is Indian investors and operators talking, at length, about which global trends actually translate to India and which... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Prime Venture Partners Podcast Prime Venture Partners
  12. This is the canonical conversation on why people give you nice-sounding feedback you cannot trust, with Rob Fitzpatrick (author... The Art of Product Podcast Podcast · About 45 minutes The Mom Test with Rob Fitzpatrick (The Art of Product, Ep. 90) Derrick Reimer and Ben Orenstein (hosts), with Rob Fitzpatrick
  13. Elena Verna has built growth at SurveyMonkey, Miro, and others, and this episode is a founder-level walkthrough of exactly the... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · About 1 hour 16 minutes The ultimate guide to product-led sales (Elena Verna) Lenny Rachitsky with Elena Verna
  14. Pete Kazanjy is blunt about defining a tight ICP from real signal (who actually buys and closes) rather than from who you wish... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · About 90 minutes Founder-led sales | Pete Kazanjy (Founding Sales, Atrium) Lenny Rachitsky (host), with Pete Kazanjy
  15. A real founder talking through the exact tension in this question: Michael built PgMustard for a market rather than only... Indie Bites (the Indie Hackers short-form sister podcast) Podcast · ~20 minute episode The slow and steady path to growth (Michael Christofides, PgMustard) James McKinven (host), Michael Christofides (guest)
  16. If you would rather hear the thinking than read it, this is Rahul Vohra on Lenny's Podcast talking through the same... Lenny's Podcast Podcast Superhuman's secret to success: ignoring most customer feedback, manually onboarding every user, and positioning around one attribute | Rahul Vohra Lenny Rachitsky
  17. This is a long-running India-first founder show where operators walk through how they actually won ground here, including going... Indian Silicon Valley Podcast Podcast · Episodes ~60 to 90 min Indian Silicon Valley with Jivraj Singh Sachar Jivraj Singh Sachar
  18. Courtland Allen founded Indie Hackers, so he has watched hundreds of small, bootstrapped founders pick niches and live with the... Software Engineering Unlocked Podcast · Approx. 45 min listen Start a Profitable Business in Six Weeks with Courtland Allen Michaela Greiler (host), Courtland Allen (guest)
  19. This is an operator being honest about the exact trap in your question: you win your first segment, then find the second one is... The SaaS Podcast (SaaS Club) Podcast Vertical SaaS: 80 Doctors to 1,000 Customers (Zak Holdsworth, Hint Health) Omer Khan (host), with Zak Holdsworth
  20. This is India's first and best-known SaaS-focused podcast, hosted by Sunil Neurgaonkar with over 100 Indian and global SaaS... Apple Podcasts Podcast · 125 episodes, roughly 30 to 45 minutes each SaaS Sessions Sunil Neurgaonkar
  21. Instead of theory, this is hundreds of interviews with real solo founders who started a profitable business on the side of a... Apple Podcasts Podcast · episodes run 45 to 75 minutes Indie Hackers Podcast Courtland Allen
  22. This is the deepest library of Indian SaaS founder conversations, and founders here talk openly about the messy realities of... SaaSBoomi Podcast · Episodes ~30 to 60 min SaaSBoomi Podcast Suresh Sambandam, Arvind Parthiban, Varun Shoor
  23. In 1996 search was a backwater and the dominant portals (Yahoo, AOL) treated it as a commodity feature to outsource. Google... Acquired Podcast · About 3 to 4 hours Google: The Origin of Search (Acquired) Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
  24. An Indian founder who actually built and scaled a SaaS business at home talks bluntly about pricing, instead of a generic... The Neon Show Podcast 7 Myths About Selling B2B SaaS In India (ft. Unicommerce founder Kapil Makhija) Siddhartha Ahluwalia (host), Kapil Makhija (guest)

Show the next 24

The questions

Talking to customers & user research 18

Learn the truth without leading the witness.

How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear? 24 → What questions should I actually ask in a customer interview? 22 → How many customer interviews do I need before I trust the signal? 24 → Where do I find people to interview when I have zero audience? 24 → How do I run customer discovery as an Indian founder building for Indian users? 24 → All 18 questions in Talking to customers & user research →
Defining your ideal customer 18

Know exactly who you're for (and who you're not).

What is an ideal customer profile and how do I define mine? 2 → How specific should my target customer be when I'm just starting? 3 → What's the difference between an ICP, a buyer persona, and a target market? 2 → How do I know if I'm targeting the wrong customer? 2 → Should I focus on one customer segment or serve everyone who'll pay? 2 → All 18 questions in Defining your ideal customer →
Finding your niche / beachhead 17

Win a tiny market completely before going wide.

What is a beachhead market and why does everyone say to start with one? 2 → How do I pick which niche to go after first? 3 → Isn't picking a tiny niche going to limit how big I can get? 2 → How do I know when I've won my niche and it's time to expand? 2 → How do I find a defensible niche in a market full of big incumbents? 2 → All 17 questions in Finding your niche / beachhead →
Understanding the problem (JTBD) 17

People hire products to do a job, find the job.

What does 'jobs to be done' actually mean? 2 → How is JTBD different from features, personas, or user needs? 2 → How do I actually uncover the job my customers are hiring my product for? 3 → Who are my real competitors once I think in jobs to be done? 3 → How do I turn a job to be done into product and messaging decisions? 2 → All 17 questions in Understanding the problem (JTBD) →
Competitive & market research 18

Know the landscape better than the incumbents.

How do I research my competitors properly? 2 → What if my customers say they have no competitors, is that good or bad? 2 → What tools should I use to track competitors and market landscape? 2 → How do I position against a bigger, better-funded competitor? 2 → How do I size the market and figure out if it's big enough? 2 → All 18 questions in Competitive & market research →
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