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.
- Instead of refreshing competitor pages all day, you set up an alert once per competitor and let the updates come to you in a... Google Tool · A few minutes to set up Google Alerts Google
- The fastest way to stand up a fake-door landing page. Build a one-page site in an afternoon, add an email capture, and measure... carrd.co Tool Carrd carrd.co
- A free one-page template for capturing what you actually learned from a single interview, so the insight does not evaporate. It... Product Talk Template · 1-page template The Interview Snapshot template Teresa Torres
- Your short answer names the LOI as a real B2B validation signal, and this is a clean, lawyer-built template made for exactly... Common Paper Template · 1 to 2 page template Free Letter of Intent Template Common Paper
- Free templates including the Positioning Canvas and a messaging document you can fill in for your own product. They turn the... aprildunford.com Template · Downloadable April Dunford Positioning Templates April Dunford
- Your short answer says to watch real sessions, and this is the most common tool for doing exactly that: replaying where new... Hotjar Tool · self-serve tool Hotjar Session Recordings Hotjar
- A ready-made template for drafting a comparable, reusable question set across every interview, which matters because you can... Notion Template Customer Interview Question Generator Notion
- When your personal network and community outreach genuinely run dry, this is the paid fallback: a recruiting panel of people... userinterviews.com Tool User Interviews userinterviews.com
- The actual one-page canvas, free to print or copy into a doc, so you can fill it in within the hour instead of reading a whole... LEANSTACK Template Lean Canvas template Ash Maurya
- A ready-to-use script and structure for the five-act interview, so you're not writing your test flow from scratch. Having the... Design Sprint Kit (Google) Template Conduct a 5-Act Interview Design Sprint Kit (Google)
- A simple tool for a narrow but useful version of unbiased reaction testing: show someone a screen for five seconds, then ask... Lyssna Tool Five Second Testing Lyssna
- This Notion template turns the Mom Test's rules into a fill in the blank interview and synthesis workflow, which is useful once... Mari Luukkainen Template Master Customer Interviews with a Mom Test-Based Notion Template for Startups Mari Luukkainen
- The switch interview technique here is the deepest version of the live conversation approach: instead of asking what someone... jobstobedone.org Tool Jobs-to-be-Done: The Switch Interview Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek
- A free AI notetaker that records, transcribes, and summarizes your calls so you are not scrambling to write notes while also... Fathom Tool Fathom Fathom
- A ready made, Mom Test style script you can use as is instead of writing your own from scratch, which removes the improvising... Ideaproof Template Customer Interview Script Template Ideaproof
- A free one page canvas built specifically to map what someone was doing before your product, their old solution or workaround,... LeanStack Template The Customer Forces Canvas (Updated) Ash Maurya
- This worksheet is built for exactly your situation: choosing one narrow persona to start with when you could plausibly serve... reifyworks.com Template The Initial Ideal Customer Profile (IICP) Worksheet Reify
- This blueprint walks through analyzing your existing customer base with a structured framework to find the patterns that signal... Winning by Design Template How to Uncover Your ICP Winning by Design
- A practical, runnable four-question survey you can send your current audience this week to find out, empirically, whether they... SurveyMonkey Tool · 10 min read How To Use The Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter SurveyMonkey
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 →