The Customer Interview Is Not a Pitch

A founder can leave a conversation feeling encouraged without having learned enough to make a better decision. The questions asked often explain the difference.

It is natural to want a customer to like an idea. You have spent time thinking about the problem, imagining the solution and finding a way to explain it. When someone says it sounds useful, the conversation feels productive.

But useful to whom, in which situation, and compared with what they already do? Those questions can remain unanswered even after a very positive meeting.

Start with an experience they can describe

A conversation about a proposed product quickly becomes a conversation about possibilities. The customer imagines a future situation; the founder imagines a future sale. Both can agree without either having to confront the details.

A more revealing starting point is a recent experience. Ask the person to walk through the last time they dealt with the problem. What triggered it? Who was involved? What did they do first? Where did the work become difficult? What happened if they left it unresolved?

Suppose you are exploring a service that helps small firms manage supplier onboarding. Instead of asking whether a simpler platform would be useful, ask about the last supplier they brought on. You may discover that collecting documents was straightforward, while getting an internal decision took weeks. That would change what you need to investigate next.

The example is hypothetical, but the discipline is practical: stay with the customer's account long enough for your original description of the problem to be challenged.

Discovery is a substantial part of building

The US National Science Foundation makes customer discovery central to its I-Corps program. Its national teams are expected to conduct at least 100 interviews with potential customers and other stakeholders over the seven-week program, using what they learn to assess potential product–market fit and inform their business model.

That is a program requirement, not a universal interview target for every founder. What matters here is the seriousness with which discovery is treated. It is work that shapes the business, rather than a few conversations arranged to endorse a plan that is already fixed.

Keep observation separate from interpretation

After an interview, record what the person actually described before writing what you think it means. A customer saying that they spend Friday afternoons reconciling invoices is an observation. Your conclusion that they will buy an automated reconciliation service is a hypothesis. Several steps still sit between the two.

You might need to understand whether the work is painful enough to change, whether the proposed buyer controls a budget, whether existing software already offers a solution, and what switching would require. A strong problem does not automatically produce an easy purchase.

Look for disagreement as well as repetition across conversations. If one group struggles with the problem and another does not, the difference may help define the customer segment. Combining both into an average can hide the most useful finding.

End with a decision to make

Before the next set of interviews, write down what you are trying to decide. Perhaps it is which customer group to focus on, which step in a process to address, or whether the problem is frequent enough to justify further work.

Afterwards, ask what changed in that decision. If the answer is nothing, look again at the questions, the people you chose and the evidence you accepted. You may have confirmed an assumption. You may also have spent the conversation presenting it too persuasively.

A useful interview gives the founder something more valuable than encouragement: a clearer view of what to do next, and why.