Customer Discovery Without the Bullshit

Why most discovery fails

Founders ask hypothetical questions: 'Would you use this?' 'Would you pay for that?' These produce confident, useless answers because the person is being asked to predict their own future behavior.

Humans are terrible at predicting their behavior. They are excellent at describing what they did yesterday.

Ask about the past, not the future

Replace 'Would you use X?' with 'When was the last time you had this problem? Walk me through what happened.'

The past has texture: tools, frustrations, workarounds, money spent. The future has whatever the person thinks you want to hear.

Five questions that actually work

These reveal real behavior:

• When was the last time you ran into this problem?
• What did you do about it? Walk me through it step by step.
• What did you try before that?
• How much time or money did this cost you?
• If a magic solution existed tomorrow, what would 'magic' look like?

Watch what they do, not what they say

If a user says they hate their current tool but they've used it for three years, the truth is in the three years — not the complaint.

If a user says they need your feature but they've never paid for any tool in your category, they probably won't pay for yours either.