Article · 15 min read

A Founder's Guide for Successful Early-Stage Customer Discovery

Jeanette Mellinger · First Round Review Free Beginner

A step-by-step guide to running discovery when you have almost no data, aimed squarely at first-time founders. It is practical on finding people to talk to and asking in a way that surfaces truth rather than encouragement. A solid starting point before your first batch of interviews.

  • Start discovery before you have a product.
  • Recruit the right people to talk to.
  • Ask so customers can safely tell you no.
Open on review.firstround.com ↗

It answers 19 questions

  1. How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear?
  2. I'm a technical founder and I hate selling, do I really have to do sales myself?
  3. What questions should I actually ask in a customer interview?
  4. I'm passionate about an idea but have zero background in it. Should I still do it?
  5. How many customer interviews do I need before I trust the signal?
  6. How do I talk to customers without getting false positives?
  7. How do I know if my idea is a real problem or just a 'nice to have'?
  8. Where do I find people to interview when I have zero audience?
  9. How do I get honest answers when the person I'm interviewing is a friend or someone in my network?
  10. How do I find a problem worth solving in an industry I have never worked in?
  11. Should I do customer interviews live over a call, or is survey data good enough at the start?
  12. 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?

And 7 more across the hub.

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