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. This is close to a direct answer to your exact question, written by a product discovery coach who works with B2B teams every... Product Talk Essay Ask Teresa: What if Your Buyers Aren't Your Users? Teresa Torres
  2. Yoon gives you three concrete tactics for the exact gap in your question: reaching a buyer who is not the one feeling the daily... Harvard Business Review Article How to Market a Product When Your Buyer Isn't Your User Eddie Yoon
  3. Written for exactly the founder-market moment you are in: a developer or junior employee uses your product, someone above them... Founder Labs (Substack) Essay How to Sell if Your User is not the Buyer Nate Ritter
  4. Rothman untangles three roles founders often blur together: buyer, user, and customer (the one who signs a contract but never... jrothman.com Essay Who to Satisfy? Differentiate Buyers, Users, and Customers for Effective Product Decisions Johanna Rothman
  5. This is the product-led growth counter-argument to old-school enterprise sales: design and market for the user first, and let... OpenView Article Why You Should Sell to Users, Not Buyers: A Product-Led Approach to Marketing Ashley Murphy
  6. If your answer is going to be 'follow the money,' this gives you the vocabulary sales teams use to actually find that person.... MEDDICC Article The Economic Buyer MEDDICC
  7. Postman, founded in Bangalore, is a clean example of designing entirely for the individual developer-user first and only later... Stack Overflow Blog Article Postman's journey and unlocking the power of APIs Abhinav Asthana (interview)
  8. Shapiro's method, asking 100 people representative of your guessed audience whether they'd put down a cash deposit, is a fast,... julian.com Article · about 10 min read Market Pull (Startup Handbook) Julian Shapiro
  9. Godin's short post makes the strongest case for going smaller on purpose: pick the smallest group you can delight completely... Seth's Blog Essay · 5 min read The Minimum Viable Audience Seth Godin
  10. This thread is founders arguing out this exact question in public, with real numbers from real small businesses about when a... Indie Hackers Thread · 10 min read Is it possible to be "too niche"? Indie Hackers community
  11. Zerodha started as a boutique brokerage aimed narrowly at active day traders, a niche the rest of the Indian broking industry... Z-Connect by Zerodha Article · 10 min read Nithin: Zero to Zerodha Nithin Kamath
  12. This is the sharpest possible answer to the second half of your question: what to do about the people who show up wanting to... Y Combinator Essay Users You Don't Want Michael Seibel
  13. Kao's bullseye model gives you a visual way to think about exactly the ongoing read your short answer describes: your core... weskao.com Essay Concentric circles of customers: focus on people who already share your worldviews Wes Kao
  14. Chargebee's early ICP was startlingly narrow: founder-developers at zero-to-one companies making a build versus buy call, not... SeedToScale (Sequoia Surge) Article How Chargebee made its first million Shekhar Kirani
  15. This article is squarely about treating the ICP as an ongoing read rather than a document you write once and file away, which... Clarify Article Why your ideal customer profile should evolve with your startup Clarify
  16. This is a practical, checklist style piece on diagnosing whether your ICP is actually too broad in the first place, before you... DevriX Article How Narrow Ideal Customer Profiles Can Expand Revenue DevriX
  17. Zerodha's founders built specifically for the self-directed retail trader who was fed up with high commissions and clunky... Forbes India Article Bootstrapping to a Billion (Zerodha founder story) Forbes India
  18. This is the origin of the '100 people who love you beats a million who sort of like you' idea that underlies your whole short... Inc. Article Airbnb's Brian Chesky: If 100 People Love Your Product, That's Enough Salvador Rodriguez
  19. This piece attacks the exact mistake domain experts make: describing a market by job title or industry instead of by the... A Smart Bear Essay Your target market isn't demographic Jason Cohen
  20. Coelen explains why founders can't segment their market from a desk using industry reports, they have to talk to real customers... Doctor Market Fit Essay How most founders get their beachhead wrong Jeroen Coelen
  21. This piece gives you a checklist for evaluating whether a slice of your industry is a genuine beachhead: urgent problem,... Doctor Market Fit Essay What makes a great beachhead market? Jeroen Coelen
  22. This is a practical, tactical follow up to the ICP essays above: once you have named your narrow slice, here is how you... A Smart Bear Essay How do I get my first few customers? Jason Cohen
  23. This deck lays out how consumer investors actually think about a target user, closer to a specific behavior and context than a... andrewchen.com Essay · 30 min read (slide deck) Consumer startups are awesome, and here's what I'm looking for at a16z Andrew Chen
  24. This is Bier's own written version of his consumer playbook, useful as a quick reference you can screenshot and revisit. It is... X (Twitter) Thread · 5 min read Nikita Bier's thread on building consumer social apps Nikita Bier

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? 23 → 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? 24 → How specific should my target customer be when I'm just starting? 24 → What's the difference between an ICP, a buyer persona, and a target market? 24 → How do I know if I'm targeting the wrong customer? 24 → Should I focus on one customer segment or serve everyone who'll pay? 23 → 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? 1 → How do I pick which niche to go after first? 2 → 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? 1 → 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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