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 framework treats persona as one of four levers, alongside problem, promise, and product, that you pull when growth or... First Round Article · 20 min read Levels of PMF First Round Capital
  2. This is the direct counterargument to our short answer, and reading it will sharpen your thinking either way. It walks through... Harvard Business Review Article · 8 min read When "Scratch Your Own Itch" Is Dangerous Advice for Entrepreneurs N. Taylor Thompson
  3. This article names the exact cognitive bias behind the red flag you're asking about: assuming other people think, want, and... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 8 min read You Are Not the User: The False-Consensus Effect Raluca Budiu
  4. A founder's first-person account of the exact failure mode in your question: mistaking an audience of people who look and think... Indie Hackers Thread · 8 min read Your build-in-public audience is not your market. I learned the difference the slow way. Indie Hackers
  5. This is the counter case, marketplaces where demand was actually the constrained side and defining the ideal buyer first is... Lenny's Newsletter Article Demand driving supply Brian Rothenberg
  6. Evans and Schmalensee studied why most attempts at multisided platforms fail, and a recurring reason is founders never nailed a... Harvard Business Review Press Book Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms David S. Evans, Richard Schmalensee
  7. This forces you to decide how you will define and select your supply side, not just that you should. It compares three... Andreessen Horowitz Article Marketplace Supply Strategy: Comprehensive, Exclusive, or Curated Casey Winters, Anne Lewandowski
  8. This warns you against a specific mistake that happens after you correctly anchor on supply: building every feature suppliers... Reforge Blog Article The Supply Features Trap Of Marketplaces Gilad Horev
  9. Elena Verna draws the line between a broad product usage ICP and a narrower sales ICP, and shows how to build both from... Elena Verna, Elena's Growth Scoop Essay I'd Segment That... Elena Verna, Elena's Growth Scoop
  10. This explains exactly how to build the retention and behavioral cohorts your short answer relies on: grouping customers by... Amplitude Article Cohort Retention Analysis: Reduce Churn Using Customer Data Amplitude
  11. This lays out how to bucket users into occasional, core and power tiers by actual product usage, which is the mechanical... Mixpanel Article User segmentation: A guide to understanding your customers Mixpanel
  12. This guide explains how to read a retention curve across different customer cohorts to spot which segment is actually sticking... Reforge Article Evaluate retention cohorts Reforge
  13. Supan's High Expectation Customer concept adds a layer your data sort alone won't catch: among your best fit customers, find... Julie Supan, First Round Review Article What I Learned From Developing Branding for Airbnb, Dropbox and Thumbtack Julie Supan, First Round Review
  14. This is a clean, practical writeup of the same 40% test methodology, with more detail on how to segment survey respondents... Reforge Article Measure and improve product/market fit with the 40% test Reforge
  15. This directly names the trap in your situation: free users are not your ICP, and your real conversion math (about 1 percent)... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Essay · 12 min read Reframing 'Freemium' by charging the marketing department Jason Cohen
  16. If your honest read is that this audience will never pay directly, Anderson's book is the map of the models that work anyway:... Chris Anderson Book · ~300 pages Free: The Future of a Radical Price Chris Anderson
  17. This names your exact situation as one of six named pivot triggers: customers crave the value proposition but can't or won't... Strategyzer Article · 10 min read The Pivot: 6 Situations When It's Time to Change Your Business Model and Value Proposition Strategyzer
  18. A concrete, worked example of exactly the fix in your short answer: the person who feels the pain (student, teacher) is often... Medium Essay · 8 min read Selling to Schools Is B(to)S Earnest Sweat
  19. Rampell lays out how a company can sell into a business while quietly building direct loyalty with the end consumer inside it,... Andreessen Horowitz Essay · 10 min read On B2B2C Business Models Alex Rampell
  20. Dunford makes the case that positioning and ICP are the same decision seen from two angles: who you are for determines what you... aprildunford.com Essay An Introduction to Positioning April Dunford
  21. Poyar's framing that you need a rough early customer profile before you can earn a real ICP is a useful corrective for founders... Growth Unhinged Article How to build your GTM strategy from scratch Kyle Poyar
  22. A practical look at how Intercom itself built customer segments across a growing team, useful because it shows the operational... Intercom Article Who's who: Understanding your business with customer segmentation Intercom
  23. A shorter, text companion to the podcast above, useful if you want to skim the key lessons on customer focus and enterprise GTM... YourStory Article Whatfix CEO Khadim Batti shares lessons on building a global enterprise SaaS business YourStory

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 →
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →