Stop Building
in the Dark

The mindset

Customer discovery is a detective exercise. You're confirming or denying your assumptions. You're not selling, not pitching, not asking customers to design your product. You're there to learn.

Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.

Every business is a stack of assumptions. Your job is to test the high-impact, high-uncertainty ones before investing heavily.

You're an intelligent filter, not an order-taker. Discovery informs decisions, it doesn't make them. Vision still leads.

Don't talk to anyone with a pulse. Target the specific customer you think has the problem.

Everyone on the team should talk to customers. Not just the designer or the founder.

The 4 reasons companies buy

Every B2B purchase maps to one of these:

• —Make money
• —Save money
• —Gain competitive advantage
• —Avoid compliance or risk

Map every pain point you hear to one of these. If it doesn't tie to one, the purchase is unlikely.

Map your assumptions first

Answer these before you interview anyone:

• —Who is my target customer?
• —What problem do they want to solve?
• —Why can't they solve it today?
• —What measurable outcome do they want?
• —Who is my earliest adopter?
• —How will I acquire customers?
• —How will I make money?
• —Who is my primary competition and why will I beat them?
• —What assumption, if proven wrong, would kill this?

Mark the ones that are both high-impact and highly uncertain. Those are your interview priorities.

Define your customer segment

"Everyone" is not a customer. Get specific: job, role, mindset, context.

Not "marketing managers." Try "marketing managers at 50–200 person B2B SaaS companies who own the content pipeline and report to the VP of Marketing."

Pick one narrow segment and one specific job to solve first.

Define three audiences:

• —Typical customer at scale (who you'll serve once you're big)
• —Early adopter (feels the pain acutely, loves trying new things, interview first)
• —Critical distribution or fulfillment partners

B2B buyer landscape

Map every role involved in the purchase:

• —User: who actually uses the product
• —Buyer: who signs the contract
• —Payer: who controls the budget
• —Technical buyer: who evaluates fit
• —Economic buyer: who approves the spend
• —Strategic buyer: who owns the outcome
• —Influencer / recommender: who shapes the decision

Start with mid-level managers, not C-suite. Easier access, more conversations, and you'll be better educated before going up the chain. Influencers and recommenders are especially valuable because they connect you to more customers.

Jobs-to-be-done framing

Define the job as the specific problem they're trying to solve in a specific situation.

Include three layers:

• —Functional needs (what they need to get done)
• —Emotional needs (how they want to feel)
• —Social needs (how they want to be seen)

Describe the problem in the customer's own words, not founder language. Pull phrasing from forums, Reddit, and actual conversations.

Validating the problem

The problem needs to be:

• —Important to the customer
• —Unsatisfied by current options
• —High-value enough that they'd pay for a better solution

If any of the three fails, it's not worth solving first.

Identify what they do today instead of your solution. Existing alternatives matter. DIY workarounds are strong signals of real need.

Distinguish primary from secondary problems. Solve the pain that matters most.

Finding interview subjects

Three rules:

• —One degree of separation. Don't interview close friends or family.
• —Be creative. Don't expect people to come to you.
• —Fish where the fish are. If a tactic isn't working, switch immediately.

Tactics:

• —End every interview with a goal of 2–3 new referrals
• —LinkedIn search by title, reach out via referral or cold
• —Call the CEO's office, ask the EA for "the person who handles X." They route you. Then name-drop the CEO's office in follow-up.
• —Find people at their moment of pain (conferences, relevant forums, events)
• —At conferences: ask for time after, not during. Follow up while memory is fresh.
• —You're a student. Say so. It's an advantage. Offer to share research results.
• —Start with warm intros before cold outreach. Always exhaust that first.

Default to asking for advice early on. "I'm not selling anything, I just want 20 minutes." People like being asked. It makes them feel important.

No surveys. Period.

Don't use surveys. Not for discovery, not for recruiting, not for screening.

Why:

• —You need the customer's exact words, context, workflow, and emotions
• —Early-stage discovery is about uncovering the real problem, not confirming your assumptions
• —Conversations let you probe, clarify, and discover unexpected needs
• —Surveys flatten nuance and kill follow-up
• —They're noisy and usually poorly designed
• —Stronger proof points come from hearing pain, dissatisfaction with current alternatives, and actual purchase intent directly

The right path:

• —Use quick research or LLMs to learn the space
• —Do primary research through live customer conversations
• —Document pain points and proof points in their own words