Customers & Research

Where do I find people to interview when I have zero audience?

A starting point

Start with the person you already know who has the problem, then ask each interviewee for two intros. Go where the customer already hangs out, niche subreddits, WhatsApp/Slack groups, LinkedIn, industry meetups, and ask to learn, not to sell. Warm intros beat cold blasts every time.

Go deeper

Read

📄 Article
Free Intermediate

A founder-friendly playbook for early customer discovery

From First Round Review by First Round Review (Jeanette Mellinger) ~20 min read

Why we picked it

A UX-research leader (ex-Uber Eats, BetterUp) gives founders a concrete three-step discovery process, including how to recruit and take notes. First Round Review is a top-tier operator source.

  • Start with a research plan that narrows who you talk to and what you want to learn
  • Record every interview and use a note-taker to stay present
  • You understand the problem when you can predict ~75% of what a customer will say
  • Keep iterating on both the customer profile and the problem you're solving
Open review.firstround.com →
📖 Book
Paid Advanced

The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win

From steveblank.com by Steve Blank ~370 pages

Why we picked it

The foundational text of customer development, 'get out of the building' started here and became the backbone of the Lean Startup. Steve Blank's own site is the primary source.

  • The biggest risk isn't building wrong tech, it's building something nobody wants
  • Customer discovery: test your hypotheses with real customers before scaling
  • Separate customer development from product development as parallel processes
  • Search for a repeatable business model before you try to execute one
Open steveblank.com →

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