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. One of the few pieces that clearly untangles ICP vs persona vs JTBD without jargon, so founders stop conflating them. Useful as... netretention.io Article · ~14 min read Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs), ABM, JTBD and Personas: knowing your customer Net Retention In 4 answers
  2. The primary-source telling of the milkshake story, the single most memorable illustration of Jobs to Be Done, straight from... HBS Working Knowledge Article · ~8 min read Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing Clayton Christensen (via Harvard Business School) In 4 answers
  3. The most practitioner-friendly deep dive into JTBD, with interviews and case studies on applying it to real products. Free to... jtbd.info / alanklement.com Book · ~230 pages When Coffee and Kale Compete: Become great at making products people will buy Alan Klement In 4 answers
  4. This is the classic mental model for exactly your question: how customer count trades off against deal size. Janz maps five... The Angel VC Essay · ~12 min read Five ways to build a $100 million business Christoph Janz In 4 answers
  5. The whole worry in your question, that slicing smaller leaves too few buyers, is exactly what Moore's target customer... HarperBusiness (Collins Business Essentials) Book · Approx. 256 pages Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition Geoffrey A. Moore In 4 answers
  6. Ash Maurya, author of Running Lean, argues you can always find how a customer solves a job today, and that existing workaround... LEANFoundry Article · About a 10 minute read Find Better Problems Worth Solving with the Customer Forces Canvas Ash Maurya In 4 answers
  7. A founder-friendly crash course on planning and running discovery interviews, with tactics from researchers at Zoom, Zapier,... First Round Review Article · 20 min read A UX Research Crash Course for Founders Jane Davis In 4 answers
  8. This is the piece written for exactly your situation: no audience, no network, no obvious way to reach the people you need.... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Article When You Have Nothing: How to Find Customers to Interview Jason Cohen In 4 answers
  9. This is the practical how-to for actually running the weekly cadence, covering the part most founders get stuck on: recruiting... Product Talk Article Customer Interviews: How to Recruit, What to Ask, and How to Synthesize What You Learn Teresa Torres In 4 answers
  10. This guide breaks an ICP into demographic, psychographic, and position attributes, then walks through a real worked example,... Reforge Guides Article · 15 min read Define the ideal customer profile Reforge Guides In 4 answers
  11. Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome) breaks positioning into concrete steps, and the segmentation step is the one this... aprildunford.com Essay · ~10 min read A Quickstart Guide to Positioning April Dunford In 4 answers
  12. This is a founder team telling on themselves: they grew for years without a defined ICP and it caused real damage to their... PostHog Article Defining our ICP is the most important thing we ever did PostHog In 4 answers
  13. A PM-turned-founder's playbook that treats defining the right customer and problem as a sequence of concrete hurdles, not... First Round Review Article · ~18 min read 8 Product Hurdles Every Founder Must Clear First Round Review In 3 answers
  14. The reference primer on the metrics and market-sizing logic investors use, including bottom-up market sizing that keeps... a16z Article · ~15 min read 16 Startup Metrics Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) In 3 answers
  15. The most concrete guide to actually measuring what customers will pay, including survey methods and tier design. It turns... lennysnewsletter.com Article · long-form guide The Ultimate Guide to Willingness to Pay Lenny Rachitsky & Patrick Campbell In 3 answers
  16. Most founders treat customer research as a one-time pre-launch exercise, then go quiet once the product ships. Torres makes the... Amazon Book · ~200 pages Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value Teresa Torres In 3 answers
  17. A hands-on companion to The Mom Test with more structure on who to talk to and how to run the process. Alvarez is strong on... Cindy Alvarez Book · ~240 pages Lean Customer Development Cindy Alvarez In 3 answers
  18. Steve Blank's argument for searching for a business model before building one, the get out of the building philosophy in short... Harvard Business Review Article · 15 min read Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything Steve Blank In 3 answers
  19. A transcript of a real switch interview so you can hear what a great customer conversation actually sounds like. Reading it... Jobs to be Done Radio Article The Jobs to be Done Mattress Interview Jobs to be Done Radio In 3 answers
  20. Ellis lays out the 40 percent test, the survey question and threshold he found across hundreds of startups for knowing you have... GrowthHackers Essay Using Product/Market Fit to Drive Sustainable Growth Sean Ellis In 3 answers
  21. Gupta names the Mom Test problem directly, that people in interviews behave like your mom and unconsciously lie to keep you... Aakash Gupta Essay Customer Interviews: Advanced Techniques Aakash Gupta In 3 answers
  22. Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman built the Sales Safari methodology, and a business, around finding what an audience already complains... Stacking the Bricks Essay · 12 min read Updating the Sales Safari System for 2023 Alex Hillman In 3 answers
  23. Michael King runs a16z's go to market network, and this piece is aimed squarely at the moment your first guess at an ICP needs... Andreessen Horowitz Article · 12 min read A Framework for Defining and Refining Your ICP Michael King In 3 answers
  24. A grounded India-specific feature with hard-won lessons from BigBasket, Razorpay, BrowserStack and Instamojo on understanding... Inc42 Article · ~15 min read Defining, Measuring And Solving Product-Market Fit Puzzle For Startups Inc42 In 2 answers

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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