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Section 3: HOW TO DO CUSTOMER DISCOVERY

Customer Discovery is not a one-time task, rather it’s an ongoing cycle of learning that you should continue practicing throughout your startup journey. However, the early and important work tends to follow four simple steps:

  1. Define your assumptions
  2. Find people to talk to
  3. Ask the right questions
  4. Capture and analyze what you heard

These aren’t rigid rules. Think of them as anchor points on a journey you’ll revisit many times.

Every founder begins with a few hunches. Write yours down in three to five simple statements about: What that problem, need, or desire is Who you think experiences the problem Why it exists and when it shows up How people are currently dealing with it (if at all) At this stage, you’re not “proving” anything. You’re simply naming the guesses you’re about to test.
Do a little light research: Browse online reviews and forums Notice patterns in your own life Look at how people behave in stores, meetings, or community spaces Read articles or industry conversations Ask yourself, “Is this just me noticing this, or does this happen to everyone?” Here are some simple tools to help you define your assumptions and get creative about mapping your potential customer’s journey:

These tools help you organize your early thinking without overbuilding.

The real learning begins when you start talking to actual humans. You don’t need a polished pitch—just say something like:

“I’m exploring a problem related to ___. Can I ask you a few questions about your experience?”

Start with your network. A friend, a coworker, someone you meet at a coffee shop—every conversation helps. But soon, you’ll want to talk to people who actually experience the problem.

In northern Michigan, your next interview participant may be closer than you think:

Aim to line up your first ten conversations. Don’t overthink it. Start with the people most connected to the problem.

The moment you start hearing the same themes repeated, you’re warming up. You’re getting closer to the heart of the problem

QUICK TIP: Use regional data to understand your market and local economic trends. Explore these resources.
U.S. Census Bureau Quick Facts
Networks Northwest Data Explorer

It’s important to develop a set of questions before you go out and start talking to people. And, once you begin interviews, remember: your goal is to learn, not to sell. Skip the pitch. Don’t explain your solution. Just let your interviewees talk about their world.

Left Column (Not This – Selling Mode) Pitching your idea Explaining features Asking leading questions Seeking validation Example speech bubbles: “Wouldn’t it be great if…?” “Would you buy this?” “Don’t you think this would help?” Right Column (Do This – Learning Mode) Listening more than talking Asking open-ended questions Letting the customer lead Seeking understanding Example speech bubbles: “Walk me through how you do this today.” “What’s the hardest part?” “What happened when you tried to fix it?”
Not All Questions Are Created Equal Bottom → Top: Closed / Leading Questions “Would you buy this?” “Do you like this idea?” Opinion-Based Questions “What do you think about…?” “Does this sound useful?” Experience-Based Questions “How do you handle this today?” “What’s frustrating about it?” Story-Driven Questions “Tell me about the last time this happened.” “What did you do next?”
Callout: Stories reveal behavior. Behavior reveals truth. You know you’re doing Customer Discovery right when people tell you their stories.
PRO TIP TO REMEMBER! As you conduct interviews, be intentional about what you capture. Start every conversation with a consistent set of foundational questions. This creates a shared baseline across interviews and allows you to spot patterns over time. Simple questions go a long way: What do you do? What are your goals? What influences your decisions? What tools or products do you rely on most? Taken together, these answers help you move beyond individual anecdotes and begin building clear customer personas and ideal customer profiles over time.
Explore these resources
Customer Interviews: How to Recruit, What to Ask, and How to Synthesize What You Learn — Teresa Torres
The Mom Test — Rob Fitzpatrick. A practical guide for asking questions that get honest, useful answers.
How to Talk to Users — Y Combinator Startup School (a short, free video for early-stage founders)
The Lean Startup method, developed by Steve Blank and Eric Ries to help founders avoid building products nobody wants. (The Lean Startup, Eric Ries, 2011)
Don’t be afraid to use AI in your customer discovery - it can be a fantastic tool! Here is a prompt you can use to help you build out your interview structure… “I’m doing customer discovery for a startup idea focused on [insert problem, need, or desire]. Please help me create a list of 10 open-ended, non-leading interview questions to understand: – how people currently experience this problem, – what workarounds they use, – how serious the problem is, and – what an ideal solution would look like. Also, review my questions to identify and reword any that might be leading or closed-ended.” This makes it easy for a founder to get started quickly.

It’s important to capture and write everything down so you’re not relying on memory. You can use a simple spreadsheet, Airtable, Google Doc, Miro board, anything works.

What matters is finding a way to capture and identify the patterns you are looking for:

  • Repeated frustrations
  • Emotional reactions
  • Clear action to take 
  • Workarounds you didn’t expect
  • Any moment when someone says, “I’d pay for that right now”

The goal is not to validate your idea—it’s to discover what’s actually true.

Once you’ve done 15–20 interviews, pause and write a short paragraph: “My ideal customer is ___, and the main problem they face is ___.” If you can do that clearly, you’re on the right path.

WHEN HAS CUSTOMER DISCOVERY “ENDED”?

The short answer: it never fully ends. Successful founders keep talking to customers as long as their business exists.

But there is a point early on where your learning stabilizes. You’ll know you’re there when:

  • Conversations start to sound repetitive
  • You can describe your ideal customer in a sentence
  • You understand the problem well enough to imagine a solution
  • You have a sense of whether someone might actually pay for that solution

Once you have this level of clarity, you’re ready for the next step: Idea Validation.

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