The Art of Customer Discovery: Lessons from 100 Conversations
Every startup begins with an assumption: "I think these people have this problem, and they'd pay for this solution." Customer discovery is the process of testing that assumption—and it's where most startups go wrong.
The Biggest Mistake: Selling Instead of Learning
When founders talk to potential customers, they often can't resist pitching their solution. They describe features. They explain benefits. They try to close the sale.
This is exactly backwards.
The goal of customer discovery isn't to sell—it's to learn. You're not there to convince people they have a problem. You're there to understand if they actually do, how severe it is, and what they're currently doing about it.
Questions That Actually Work
After analyzing thousands of customer conversations in Runway, we've identified the questions that lead to real insights:
1. "Tell me about the last time you experienced [problem]."
This question gets specific. Instead of hypotheticals, you hear about real situations. You learn the context, the emotions, the stakes.2. "What have you tried to solve this?"
If someone has a real problem, they've probably tried to fix it. This tells you about your competition—including the "do nothing" option.3. "What happened after that?"
Keep them talking. The most valuable insights often come in the follow-up, when people share details they wouldn't have thought to mention.4. "How much would you pay to make this problem go away?"
This is scary to ask, but essential. Willingness to pay separates "nice to have" from "must have."The Pattern of Genuine Pain
- Real customer pain has a specific pattern:
- Frequency: They encounter it regularly, not just once
- Intensity: It actually bothers them, not just mildly inconvenient
- Investment: They've already spent time, money, or effort trying to solve it
When all three are present, you've found something worth building.
The Pivot Signal
Sometimes customer discovery reveals that your initial assumption was wrong. This isn't failure—it's success. You've learned something valuable before building the wrong thing.
- In Runway, we've seen founders discover that:
- Their target customer wasn't the real buyer
- The problem they assumed was different from the actual pain point
- A related problem was 10x more valuable than their original idea
This is the power of customer discovery: it lets you course-correct before you've invested everything.
Start Your Own Discovery
Customer discovery is a skill, and skills improve with practice. Runway lets you practice this skill over and over, talking to realistic AI customers, learning to ask better questions, and developing the instincts that separate successful founders from everyone else.