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. The most-quoted primary source on why founders should launch fast and iterate, short, canonical, and from the co-founder of YC.... paulgraham.com Article · ~8 min read Startups in 13 Sentences Paul Graham In 2 answers
  2. The authoritative handbook on founder-led sales, written for technical/first-time sellers building B2B SaaS. Readable free... foundingsales.com Book · book (~400 pages) Founding Sales: The Early Stage Go-to-Market Handbook Peter Kazanjy In 2 answers
  3. Seibel's whole point is that a market only counts once real customers are grabbing the product as fast as you can make it and... Michael Seibel (Y Combinator) Essay · ~4 min read The Real Product Market Fit Michael Seibel In 2 answers
  4. Moore's classic maps the market you are timing your entry into: innovators and early adopters buy for very different reasons... Goodreads Book · ~250 pages Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers Geoffrey A. Moore In 2 answers
  5. This lays out both the top-down (start from a big industry number) and bottom-up (build up from your own price times likely... HubSpot Blog Article · ~12 min read TAM, SAM & SOM: What Do They Mean & How Do You Calculate Them? Clifford Chi In 2 answers
  6. This is the cleanest, most concrete catalogue of the exact question shapes that quietly steer a person to the answer you... Nielsen Norman Group Article · about 7 min read Avoid Leading Questions to Get Better Insights from Participants Amy Schade In 2 answers
  7. Judging whether people will actually change their behavior comes down to how well you can hear intensity in what they say, and... deployempathy.com Book · Full book, roughly 250 pages Deploy Empathy: A Practical Guide to Interviewing Customers Michele Hansen In 2 answers
  8. This is the canonical argument that you do not need a mass market to build something real, you need a small number of people... The Technium (kk.org) Essay · ~15 min read 1,000 True Fans Kevin Kelly In 2 answers
  9. Aulet turns beachhead selection into an explicit, sequenced process (market segmentation, then picking one beachhead, then... Wiley Book Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup Bill Aulet In 2 answers
  10. Lavingia's whole thesis is the one you need as a part-time founder: start with a community you already know and belong to, then... Penguin Random House Book · 288 pages The Minimalist Entrepreneur: How Great Founders Do More with Less Sahil Lavingia In 2 answers
  11. The honest answer to 'how many' is not a magic number, it is saturation: you keep going until new interviews stop teaching you... Nielsen Norman Group (nngroup.com) Essay · ~10 min read Interview Sample Size in Qualitative UX Research Maria Rosala In 2 answers
  12. The canonical fake-door test, told by the founder who ran it. Buffer started as a two-page site: one page pitched the tool, a... Buffer Article · ~10 min read Idea to Paying Customers in 7 Weeks: How We Did It Joel Gascoigne In 2 answers
  13. If you are selling to companies rather than consumers, this is the specific playbook. Four concrete ways founders got signal... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~12 min read How to Validate Your B2B Startup Idea Lenny Rachitsky In 2 answers
  14. Savoia, who led early Google AdWords, argues most ideas fail because nobody wanted them, and teaches pretotyping: cheap... Alberto Savoia Book · ~250 pages The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed Alberto Savoia In 2 answers
  15. The free notes behind Zero to One, centered on the contrarian question, 'what important truth do very few people agree with you... blakemasters.tumblr.com Essay · long form, multiple lectures Peter Thiel's CS183 Startup Course Notes Peter Thiel and Blake Masters In 2 answers
  16. GV's method for building a realistic facade and testing it with five target customers in a single week, which is the interview... GV (Google Ventures) Article · ~15 min read plus resources The Design Sprint Jake Knapp In 2 answers
  17. Consumer PMF advice does not map cleanly onto B2B, where deals are few, considered, and slow, which describes many Indian... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~3,000 words A guide for finding product-market fit in B2B Lenny Rachitsky In 2 answers
  18. A free, short predecessor to The Right It for when you want the method without buying a book. It lays out cheap experiments... pretotyping.org Book · ~90 pages Pretotype It (free PDF) Alberto Savoia In 2 answers
  19. Torres makes the single most important move concrete: instead of asking what people generally do, ask them to tell you about a... Product Talk Article · 15 min read Story-Based Customer Interviews Uncover Much-Needed Context Teresa Torres In 2 answers
  20. Written specifically for engineers who would rather ship code than sell. McKenzie, a developer who bootstrapped his own... Kalzumeus Essay · approx 20 min read Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It Patrick McKenzie In 2 answers
  21. If you do not want to buy the whole Traction book yet, this free essay gives you the core method in one sitting. It shows how... Gabriel Weinberg (Medium) Essay · 15 min read The Bullseye Framework for Getting Traction Gabriel Weinberg In 2 answers
  22. A short, sharp counterpoint to the instinct to try to reach everyone before you launch: Godin argues you should aim for the... Seth's Blog Essay · 3 min read The smallest viable audience Seth Godin In 2 answers
  23. Pete Kazanjy, who has built and scaled multiple B2B sales orgs, gives a founder-focused breakdown of how to get specific enough... Lenny's Podcast Article · 10 min read Defining your ideal customer profile: Pete Kazanjy's perspective Pete Kazanjy In 2 answers
  24. A comprehensive, practical walkthrough of the whole interview process, recruiting, scripting, running, and synthesizing, from a... User Interviews Article The Ultimate Guide to Doing Kickass Customer Interviews User Interviews 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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