Customer discovery

Customer Discovery & Interviewing

Method: Steve Blank & Bob Dorf (Customer Development, The Startup Owner's Manual; free course: How to Build a Startup) and Giff Constable (Talking to Humans, 12 Tips).

Foundation: there are no facts inside the building — and discovery is done by the founders, never delegated (not to an employee, a survey form, or an AI). This skill PREPARES and DEBRIEFS interviews; only real conversations produce evidence.

The interview rulebook (Constable's 12 Tips, condensed)

1. Work to their schedule, not yours.
2. Get psyched to hear things you don't want to hear — the goal is learning, not a sale.
3. Disarm politeness training — people won't call your baby ugly; tell them honesty is the only way they can help you.
4. Start with behavior, not feedback — their current process in the problem space first; your solution last (if at all). Ask about competitors, even indirect ones, and how they found them.
5. Open-ended questions only — never yes/no; never embed the answer you want.
6. Listen, don't talk — ~80% silence; don't fill pauses; don't sell.
7. Encourage but don't influence — nods and "interesting", nothing that steers.
8. Follow your nose and drill down — always chase the "why" behind the "what".
9. Parrot back to confirm — they'll correct or refine.
10. Ask for introductions — leave every interview with 2–3 names.
11. Do the paired follow-ups — one person interviews, one takes notes where possible.
12. Write notes immediately — within 30 minutes, before details fade.

Named failure modes to avoid (Blank): Death by Demo · Death by PowerPoint · Assuming You Know · Customers Lie · The Distracted Customer · The User, the Buyer & the Saboteur (B2B roles differ — interview them separately) · overweighting one anecdote.

Interview PREP protocol (what this skill produces before a conversation)

1. Who: target archetype + where to find them. Free interview streams founders forget: existing customers at the moment of purchase, lapsed customers (information-dense — they chose to leave), referral chains ("who else do you know…?").
2. Hypotheses under test: pull 3–5 ASSUMPTIONS from the F/A/U list; for each, the pass/fail signal.
3. Question guide (a guide, not a script): behavior-first, past-tense stories ("walk me through the LAST time you…"), the trigger question ("what was happening that day that made you act?"), decider/payer question, price anchored to real past spending — never "would you pay X?". Localize phrasing to the customer's language.
4. The dual-role trap: if the meeting is also a sales/service delivery, do the job first, learn second — then ask permission for 5 minutes of questions.
5. Cadence: consumer businesses need 50–100 conversations; ~12–15/week is a serious pace. Track weekly counts by face-to-face / phone / video.

Interview DEBRIEF protocol (when the founder reports back)

1. Capture what was said/done (their words, quoted) strictly separate from interpretation.
2. Score commitment signals and grade the evidence E0–E4: E0 compliments/opinions (count for nothing) · E1 told stories of past behavior · E2 observed behavior · E3 commitment — money promised, real time given, actual introductions (names/numbers) · E4 transaction. "Great idea!" with no E3+ = politeness, not validation. An assumption is working-validated at E3 from ≥3 independent people; pricing claims only at E4.
3. Propose ledger deltas explicitly (the F/A/U Belief Ledger is the single source of truth): which assumptions changed grade (A7: E1 → E3), which were contradicted, which new items appeared. n=1 is a direction, never a verdict.
4. Watch for: the founder pitched instead of listened; positives inflated by politeness; a single story treated as a pattern.
5. Persist the debrief to discovery/interviews/<date>-<n>.md in the project, with gaps (⬜) to close at the next touchpoint.

Interview #N — [who], [date], [type], interviewer: [founder]
WHAT THEY SAID/DID (facts only, quoted):
WHAT I THINK IT MEANS (interpretation, separate):
COMMITMENT SIGNALS (money/time/intros):
F/A/U MOVEMENTS (gained evidence / contradicted / new unknowns):
REFERRALS COLLECTED:
DID I PITCH INSTEAD OF LISTEN? (honesty check)

Every question guide is hypotheses in disguise; every debrief is bookkeeping on your beliefs. Nothing here is customer evidence until a real human says it.

Ledger discipline (v2): reference Belief Ledger IDs ([A4], [F7]) for every claim; propose new/changed items in a closing "Ledger delta" section rather than restating claims — restated claims drift.

Fill-in templates: TEMPLATES.md in this skill's folder — copy the structures into your project's discovery/ and fill with labels.