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Understand your customers

Talking to customers & user research

Learn the truth without leading the witness.

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How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear? Stop pitching and start interrogating their past. Ask about what they actually did last time the problem hit, what it cost them, and what they trie... Beginner 24 resources → What questions should I actually ask in a customer interview? Ask about the past and the concrete, not the future and the hypothetical. 'Walk me through the last time you dealt with X', 'what's the hardest par... Beginner 22 resources → How many customer interviews do I need before I trust the signal? There's no magic number, you're done when you can predict roughly the next answer before they say it. In practice that's usually 15-30 conversation... Intermediate 24 resources → How do I show a prototype to users without biasing their reaction? Hand it over, give them a goal, and shut up. Don't narrate or explain, watch where they get stuck, what they ignore, and what they say out loud. Th... Intermediate 24 resources → What's the difference between a customer saying they'll pay and actually pulling out a card, and how do I test the real one early? Verbal commitment is close to worthless because saying yes costs nothing, so people say it to be nice. The truth shows up when you ask for somethin... Intermediate 24 resources → How do I run good discovery calls in India when the person keeps saying yes to be polite but never converts? Politeness bias is real, and in many Indian conversations a warm yes is social lubrication, not a purchase signal. As a starting point, stop asking... Intermediate 24 resources → I've done 20 interviews and every person described a slightly different problem. How do I know if there's a real pattern or just noise? Scattered problems usually mean your target group is too broad, not that there's no signal. As a starting point, sort the transcripts by who the pe... Advanced 24 resources → How do I do user research when I'm building something nobody has seen before and can't describe what they want? People are terrible at imagining products, but they are excellent at describing their current struggles, so research the struggle, not the solution... Advanced 24 resources → How do I recruit and interview my competitor's customers without it getting weird or them shutting down? Competitor customers are gold because they've already paid to solve the problem, and their complaints are your roadmap. As a starting point, approa... Intermediate 24 resources → How many customer conversations should I do before I start building versus building a rough version to learn faster? There's no magic number, but the honest rule is: keep interviewing until you can predict the answers, and switch to building the moment talk stops ... Intermediate 24 resources → As a solo technical founder who hates sales calls, how do I do user research without it draining me every week? You don't have to become an extrovert, you have to make research a small, repeatable habit instead of a dreaded event. As a starting point, batch t... Intermediate 24 resources → How do I tell the difference between a nice-to-have problem and one people will actually change their behavior to fix? A real problem shows up in what people already do about it: they've cobbled together a workaround, they're paying for a bad substitute, or they've ... Advanced 24 resources →

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