Customer discovery is easy, right? You just call up a dozen or so potential customers, ask them a bunch of questions, and you're done. It seems absurd but that's what a lot of founders do. No one becomes a founder because they like to research; they become founders because they like to build. But building too early often comes at the cost of building the wrong thing.

Phil and his team at Paper did real customer discovery. They moved to a different country and rented a house right next to their customers. They visited their customers every day for months.  Countless hours later, they understood exactly what was needed and built the right thing.

They took Research Mode seriously. And it paid off. In 2022, they raised $300M and became a unicorn. Clearly, their product struck a chord. If you want to learn how exactly they did it, check this episode out.

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You've built a startup from nothing. You've set up a corporation, built a product, had customers, raised some funding, and maybe even had an exit. The entire time you're thinking to yourself, "Wow, next time it'll be so much easier!".

That's what Mike thought. He built TopHat from nothing to 500 FTEs. In early 2020, he raised US$130M and exited the company. He had a huge success and decided to do it all over again.

In this episode, Mike shares what it's like to start over. Which parts of the process are easier and which parts are not. If you're a repeat founder about to start over, this is the episode for you.

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Finding product market fit is rarely a straight line. Many founders zig and zag through different iterations of their product, different target markets and competitive positioning until they find true product market fit. 

It was no different for Hongwei, the CEO and Founder of MappedIn. He went from building indoor maps for malls, to getting an investment on Dragon's Den, to finally building an 8-figure ARR startup. 

In this episode, he shares the main milestones and pivots that took him from a student at Waterloo to the CEO of a company with almost 100 employees. The main lesson? You might start off with a niche, non-scalable idea. But by working with customers you find unique insights you would otherwise never have uncovered. 

To win, you have to first be in the game.

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Every founder knows before you launch, you have to build an MVP. They also know that to build an MVP, you should do customer discovery. But few understand how to properly do customer discovery. 

Before startup mode, there's research mode. And most founders don't do it right. Failure to do so is why most founders end up solving fake problems. If you want to avoid the fake problem trap, you need to spend a lot more time than you might think on research and customer discovery. 

Before launching the product, Adrian spoke to hundreds of paralegals. He hosted in-person focus groups in multiple cities. It was critical to his success and it's how he learned exactly what the problems were and exactly what to build.

If you want to learn how he did it, check out the episode.

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If you're selling to businesses, you already know... before you publicly launch your product, you'll have to go through a private beta. 

But beta programs are not all made equal. Many founders go through the motion but get very little out of it. Others, like Jack (the founder/CEO of Clio, a $1.5B start-up) leverage it to get the right customers, helpful feedback, and a successful launch.

Who should you let in and how do you get them? How early should you let customers in? When do you know you're ready to launch?  Those are a few of the questions Jack answers on the show. If you're going through a beta, this is the episode for you.

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Raising money seems really easy when you're reading Techcrunch. Then you go out and try to do it and all of a sudden it seems impossible. Especially when you're new to the startup world and know no one.

That's exactly what it was like when Aman, the founder/CEO of Procurify, raised his first round. He describes in vivid details how he flew to San Francisco, slept on the floor of a shared house, cold emailed Mark Cuban and got him to invest. The series of events in this episode are extremely unlikely. They are hard to believe. But they are real. 

The reality is that early rounds raised by first-time founders often look like pure luck or serendipity. But you'll notice the hustle, the networking, and the determination that creates these "happy accidents". If you're about to try to raise a pre-seed or seed round, you'll want to check this out. 

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Before startup mode, there’s research mode. 

Many startup stories sound like happy accidents, where founders stumble upon an amazing idea more by chance than by strategy. The reality is the best founders have a deep understanding of the problem they’re solving. They are experts in their industries. They make sure not to invest time and resources into solving fake problems. And they achieve that through customer discovery.

Prior to writing a single line of code, Hanif spoke with 100s of industry experts, employees and potential customers in his industry. He broke down his research into multiple phases. And he didn’t commit to building Symend until he was sure there was a problem worth solving. 

If you want to understand how to do customer discovery right, check out this episode.

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There are two types of startups: those that sell into existing markets and those that create new markets. 

There are ups and downs to both. Selling into an existing market means you have a clear idea of customer needs and market size. It also means you have lots of competition. Creating a new market tends to cost a lot of money and the upside is uncertain. But you get to define the market and potentially capture a strong position in your customer's minds, like Uber or Airbnb.

When Dialogue started, telemedicine wasn't really a thing. At least, it wasn't a thing companies paid for in Canada. Cherif built Dialogue into a public company in just a few years by creating a new market.

In this episode, he shares details of how we crafted the story and sold the product to his first few customers. If you want to learn how to create a new market, check this episode out.

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The standard advice is you need to first generate your own demand, and only then look for partnerships to accelerate your business. Another piece of standard advice is you should probably raise a small round  early on to hire key employees. The last piece of advice is that if you're a business founder, you probably should get a technical co-founder.

Laura chose to do exactly the opposite. And it worked.

She decided not to bring on a technical co-founder, and it's "the best decision she ever made". She decided to bootstrap the company for as long as possible, and it helped her focus on what really mattered. And she decided to start with partnerships and it worked.

If you want to learn how she did it, check out this episode.

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You've launched a startup. Your excitement turns to anxiety as it becomes clear things aren't working out. Some customers are buying but not nearly enough. They like your product, but they don't love it.

You realize you don't have product-market fit and are unlikely to get it. You'll need to change things up. You'll need to pivot.

It's a painful process, but pivots are more common than you think. The right pivot can take you from nothing to billion-dollar status. Many unicorns, including Slack, Twitter and Ada, started off as completely different businesses. 

The key, of course, is to do it right. Mike and his co-founder spent a full year as customer service agents to feel their customers' pains. They solved those problems over time and a few years later raised at a $1.2B valuation. 

If you want to hear exactly how they did it, have a listen.

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