Customers & Research

How do I actually uncover the job my customers are hiring my product for?

A starting point

Interview people who recently switched to or bought something in your space and reconstruct the timeline: what triggered the search, what they used before, what pushed and pulled them. The story of the switch reveals the real job, not a survey asking 'what features do you want?'.

Go deeper

Watch

▶️ Video
Free Beginner

How to Talk to Users

On YC Startup Library by Eric Migicovsky (YC / founder of Pebble) ~25 min

Why we picked it

A YC partner turns 'talk to users' into a repeatable 5-question interview script you can use this afternoon. It's The Mom Test compressed into a lecture, perfect if you want the method fast before reading the book.

  • Don't pitch your idea, you'll bias every answer.
  • Anchor on the last time they hit the problem, and what they did about it.
  • If they've done nothing to solve it, the problem may not be painful enough.
Open ycombinator.com →

Read

📖 Book
Free Intermediate

When Coffee and Kale Compete: Become great at making products people will buy

From jtbd.info / alanklement.com by Alan Klement ~230 pages

Why we picked it

The most practitioner-friendly deep dive into JTBD, with interviews and case studies on applying it to real products. Free to read and written by a leading JTBD practitioner.

  • A job is the struggle to turn a current situation into a preferred one
  • Seemingly unrelated products (coffee vs kale) compete for the same job
  • Study switching moments, the push and pull that make people change
  • Attach value to what the product does for the customer, not to features
Open alanklement.com →
📄 Article
Freemium Intermediate

Know Your Customers' 'Jobs to Be Done'

From Harvard Business Review by Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, David S. Duncan ~20 min read

Why we picked it

The canonical HBR article that formalizes JTBD from its originators, the authoritative reference every founder citing 'jobs to be done' should have actually read.

  • A 'job' is the progress a customer is trying to make in a circumstance
  • Jobs have functional, social, and emotional dimensions
  • Innovation succeeds when it's organized around the job, not the product category
  • Understanding the job reveals who and what you truly compete with
Open hbr.org →

People also ask

What does 'jobs to be done' actually mean? People don't buy products, they 'hire' them to make progress in a specific situation, the famous milkshake was hired to make a boring commute beara... Beginner 2 resources → How is JTBD different from features, personas, or user needs? Personas describe who; JTBD describes the progress they're trying to make and the struggle that pushes them to switch. Features are your answer; th... Intermediate 2 resources → Who are my real competitors once I think in jobs to be done? Anything the customer currently 'hires' to get the same job done, including a spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group, a competitor, or doing nothing at all.... Intermediate 3 resources → How do I turn a job to be done into product and messaging decisions? Write the job as a struggling-moment statement ('when I ___, I want to ___, so I can ___') and use it as the filter for what to build and how to pi... Advanced 2 resources → How do I talk to customers without getting false positives? Never pitch your idea in the interview, it invites polite lies. Ask about their real life and past behaviour: the last time they hit the problem, w... Beginner 3 resources → How many people should I talk to, and how do I find them? Aim for enough that patterns repeat, often 15-30 focused conversations before signal stabilises. Find them by going where the problem lives: your o... Beginner 3 resources →