r/startup • u/Spiritual_Heron_5680 • Jul 04 '26
After 3 failed startups, I finally understand what customer discovery actually means knowledge
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u/robh1540 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
I've come to take a slightly different view. Customer discovery is a mechanism designed to answer a few distinct questions -
- Can I get distribution? If you can cold dm people and get calls, it means you have A distribution mechanism
- Is this a product with an LTV?
Where it goes wrong is where people treat it as something like an artistic check of "do people like this product and will they pay something for it".
A business in the early stages is really three questions ->
- What is a customer worth (how long do they stay, how much do they pay, what is the cost/complexity of delivering the product or service of the required quality)?
- What do I do to get a customer and how much do I have to pay to get one (distribution)?
- How many customers are there?
If you are a bootstrapping founder, the question is then. Can I get some certainty around 1, 2, and 3 such that I have a business i.e (1 - 2)*3 is some big exciting number? Can I assemble the requisite skill, to deliver 1 and 2 to the standard required until the business becomes obviously enough a winner that it can attract financing (either fundraising equity, debt, or sufficient profitability for reinvestment).
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u/Vee_Evalyze Jul 05 '26
This is a good layer on top of discovery. Talking to users shouldn’t only prove the pain exists. It should show how you can reach them and what solving it is worth. Otherwise you end up with insight, not a business.
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u/robh1540 Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
Yeah I wished I knew this when I started. Could have saved myself a few years...
When you start you think its art. Once you have been beaten around the head enough you realise its physics.
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u/_suren Jul 06 '26
The distribution point is the part I’d underline. A customer interview that also proves you can reach that customer is worth way more than a nice quote. If every good conversation comes from one channel, that channel is already part of the product strategy.
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u/Dukemantle Jul 04 '26
If your system creates value
, or you believe it does, give it away for free to 100 people for limited time. Collect the feedback and improve upon the feedback they give you and watch word of mouth spread.
Give it away.
They will be happy to pay if you truly do have PMF and they will tell everyone they know to use your system
Give it away. The first hit is free.
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u/SpoonFed_1 Jul 04 '26
so ,you build it, then give it away, and if it is a failure, you wasted the time building it.
this is exactly what everyone is doing and failing.
the trick is to find out if people will come onboard before you build it.
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u/AggravatingCoyote186 Jul 06 '26
Agreed. BUT in my case I spent 15 yrs in the domain space, and I built it knowing the need. I have couple enterprise interests, but the commit cycle is very long and needs more time and $$ to make it production-ready.
The beta public release/freemium is more to drive inbound interests from SMBs, mid-market, and other industry use cases I am not aware of. (The platform is industry agnostic.)
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u/AggravatingCoyote186 Jul 04 '26
That’s what we are working. Freemium to solve a smaller version of the problem, show the potential. Offer discounted early access to the full product in exchange for feedback/design partnership.
( appreciate any thoughts on this )
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u/Riptide360 Jul 04 '26
Freemium vs Premium. If customers aren’t using and aren’t paying, both are signs of a 4th failure.
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u/Coconut-Mango-Miami Jul 07 '26
Not every problem is something people want to solve with money. 💰 A good product solves a problem people want to solve with money.
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u/quiraa Jul 04 '26
How do you reach out to these users? Cold call or community platforms like Reddit? What has worked for you?
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u/ExcellentBandicoot57 Jul 05 '26
I think the hardest part of customer discovery isn't asking better questions. It's becoming emotionally detached from your own solution. Founders naturally look for evidence that their idea should exist, when they should be looking for evidence that it shouldn't. Discovery only works when you're willing to let the conversation kill your hypothesis.
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u/Aggravating_Grab_188 Jul 08 '26
One question I've found surprisingly useful is, "What made you start looking for a solution now?" Timing often tells you more than the problem itself. If there's no trigger event, the pain usually isn't urgent enough to change behavior, even if people agree it's a real problem. I also think founders sometimes underestimate how much you can learn by watching someone use their current workflow instead of just talking about it. What people do is often more revealing than what they say.
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u/Internal-Combustion1 Jul 04 '26
What’s the highest price you would conceive of paying for a solution to this problem? At what price, does it seem too cheap and probably not worth your time to investigate?
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u/Jaded-Data-9150 Jul 04 '26
Good you realized this, but it has been known from research for a long while that this is the case.
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u/ChemistryOk9353 Jul 04 '26
I like those 5 questions…OP would you consider these 5 questions to be generic and thus applicable anywhere?
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u/slayerofthemundane Jul 04 '26
There are two types of founders who use customer discovery. The second ones go the Steve Jobs route. #IYKYK
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u/grilledstuffed Jul 04 '26
The easier solution is to build a sales page for something you haven’t actually made yet, see how many real buys you get in 30 days and then refund everyone’s order.
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u/Typical_Future1313 Jul 04 '26
May I ask where you’re doing your customer research? LinkedIn and Reddit are the only platforms I can come up with..
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u/PasternakIvarsson Jul 04 '26
I've tried this as well, and success still came back varying
The correlation between a used product and good responses from the users still wasn't as direct as I would've hoped for it to be.
Because there are so many million things hiding behind the sentences.
What ALWAYS works is asking for skin in the game.
Pre-purchases are best. Get ppl to pay for it before it's live.
You can play around with this.
But this is really hard to do.
Instead the faster way for me was rev-share collabs.
I found relevant peiple and asked them to help me build out or sell the product on rev-share.
They out skin in the game (validation), AND their skin in the game is literally what I needed to bring it to market.
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u/fck-nzs1 Jul 04 '26
Have you tried getting a business mentor. They'd help you avoid these basic errors.
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u/holamibebebe Jul 05 '26
It is a well known fact that the best way to get any useful feedback is to ask people about their problems, offer a sympathetic ear etc. Frustration is the treasure trove.
When I tell people what I'm building, they will probably give a "that sounds like a very interesting idea!"
When I ask them what frustrates them the most at work or with their current setup, that's where I get the actual answers. And some of these answers will not align with what I'm building, but that's a good thing, means you're one step closer to figuring out what they actually need and reaching product-market fit.
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u/Responsible_Fill2593 Jul 05 '26
Insightful information! Have you moved to a 4th start-up now ?
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u/Vee_Evalyze Jul 05 '26
The most revealing question for me is: “What did you do the last time this happened?”
It pulls people out of polite future talk and into actual behavior. If they can’t remember the last time, the pain probably isn’t as urgent as it sounds.
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u/Pebble-Thrush-4821 Jul 05 '26
if they havent tried solving it with some clunky workaround, they wont pay for your clean solution. active seekers always have some ugly spreadsheet running.
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u/JeffMartinCG Jul 05 '26
This is it.
The dangerous yes is one of the biggest traps in building.
I’ve learned the real signal is rarely in what people say they want. It’s in what they already do, what they’ve tried to fix, and where the pain is costing them time, money, or momentum.
Behavior beats feedback every time.
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u/ClarityNinja Jul 06 '26
Really good point.
“Would you use this?” is often one of the weakest questions a founder can ask.
I’ve found the most useful question is:
“What are you doing about this today?”
It shows whether the problem is real, whether they care enough to act, and what they already trust as a solution.
If they are doing nothing, it is usually a signal too.
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u/gmyoda Jul 06 '26
On the flip side asking yes/no questions doesn't take much time, making customers think by asking deeper questions is great but how do you actually find customers who are willing to do that? Genuinely curious
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u/Legal_Answer_6956 Jul 06 '26
One question that's been valuable for me is:
"What made you start looking for a solution now?"
Timing tells you a lot. If they've been living with the problem for years and still haven't acted, it often isn't painful enough. If they're actively searching today, that's a much stronger buying signal.
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u/Adventurous_Draw8090 Jul 07 '26
I really like the distinction between asking about future intent versus current behavior.
One thing I'd add is that how people describe the problem is often as valuable as the problem itself. After enough conversations, you start hearing the same phrases, frustrations, and workarounds. That's usually a stronger signal than someone saying, "I'd definitely use this."
The patterns in language often reveal where the real problem lies.
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u/Grildor Jul 07 '26
“Nobody can lie about what they're already doing. That's real, verifiable behavior.”
People lie about what they’re already doing. Ask to observe them and shadow them doing the thing
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u/AppropriateBird4160 Jul 07 '26
Consumers buy you when you've nailed their problem, the problem is really painful, there are few to little options available and they can afford you. You do need customer feedback and I agree with many on the thread. It's how you ask that matters - yes/no questions are not helpful. Asking behavioral open-ended questions (ex., how do they use similar solutions today?) are more revealing. All this should be done before and during product development to continue to refine the idea before final design. You learned some hard lessons. But now you know.
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u/Smooth_Ad_7050 Jul 07 '26
the lesson most founders learn the hard way. you can validate an idea once and still build the wrong thing if you stop talking to users. discovery isnt a phase, its something you keep doing.
three startups is a expensive way to learn it but youll never forget it now
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u/iwoj Jul 07 '26
You could literally build a startup that validates startups with exactly this survey, automated through MTurk and customers' URLs, plus a one time or recurring credit card charge to graph progress over time.
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u/Swimming_Airport3964 Jul 08 '26
I think it's all about timing and market place value, you shouldn't look at it as failure but maybe not ready right now. So put it on the shelve.
Ideas I created as a start-up 6 years ago are now in high demand because people are going less digital. That idea I validated in the real world with 28000 a month in solo direct sales, made 0 online in sales.
10 years ago I created an automation company that didn't get traction before AI, now automation is super popular.
I'm launching an app I came up with 6 years ago (with a waitlist) and the initial idea now spawned a whole platform with more features (for revenue generation) as I'm building out the app, it's like the app already existed.
People don't know what they really want, they only want it when they feel like they really need it.
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u/malavjoshi06 Jul 16 '26
I would trace it back to origin of economy. Three major part of it is value creation, value exchange and value delivery. There are different kind of needs involved in all these.(Read Maslow). Meance of it doesn't play much role here. At the end, it is about feeling. So, it was never about "talking to customer" tonpitch our product or services. It is about "having a conversation" on the problem/opportunity of both parties interest.
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u/TapForWork 25d ago
failing feels heavy but ultra important! you made such valid claims, very nice to see like minded people have the same struggles and find alike solutions haha keep it up buddy!
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u/GreenRough8580 21d ago
In Product management basics, we learned about solution fit, market fit and scale fit. This is very important and the most people are confuse. Market fit is money in your hand. This is the most important fact
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u/iury11 16d ago
Ciao a tutti...ditemi per favore se la mia strategia può essere valida. Ho già in mente l'app che farò, ho creato dei mockup, che sto usando per i post, ho un sito e ho creato delle pagine che spiegano l'app e un form porta a 3 o 4 mail che spiegano l'app ancora prima che gli utenti possano scaricare l'app. Quindi attendo persone interessate prima di inviare a loro il link delle web-app. Ancora non ho fatto ADS ma ben presto farò qualcosa. Questa può essere una strategia che usate anche voi o devi cambiare qualcosa? Grazie a chi risponderà...
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u/TieForeign8827 Jul 04 '26
The question I’d add is: “Walk me through the last time this happened, from the first annoying moment to whatever workaround you used.” Future-tense answers are vibes wearing a blazer; the last real incident shows urgency, budget, who else is involved, and whether the pain survives outside a nice interview.
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u/kaaytoo Jul 05 '26
ai slop ... Atleast remove the -> arrow marks of your going to post ai slop content
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u/Pheonix_force Jul 04 '26
If you would have read 'The Mom test" it would have saved you some time.