Don’t Just Build—First Discover Your Real Customers Before Execution

Think back to a time you dove into a project, full of energy, only to realize weeks or months later that few people wanted what you’d made. Maybe you pressed ahead, convinced that perseverance was everything. The to-do lists kept growing, the caffeine intake climbed, but your audience stayed silent. Even with relentless optimism, the echoing absence of real interest stung more than you expected.

Imagine doing things differently. One rainy Thursday, instead of burying yourself in coding, you call up someone who loosely fits your idea of a customer. Your voice shakes a little, but you spin a story about wanting to learn. Her laughter surprises you—she had the exact issue you thought, but she describes it completely differently. As you scribble notes with a cheap pen, you realize three features you thought were brilliant don’t really matter, and another detail—a quick login—comes up over and over. The next afternoon, you chat with a teacher who immediately zones in on something you’d missed: the feeling of being overwhelmed by too many options.

By the end of the week, you’ve spoken to ten people. Their language, not yours, starts to shape your next steps. You let some defensiveness go every time you catch yourself trying to explain instead of listen. Slowly, the features list shrinks, and your concept feels more solid, more crisp. It has a pulse. You sense momentum—not because you finished building anything, but because your understanding is sharper than it was just days before.

Psychology and behavioral science call this the danger of the “confirmation bias”—our tendency to see what we expect, ignoring signals that conflict with our beliefs. Customer Discovery disrupts that by forcing you into learning mode, gathering feedback before the stakes are high. Studies on entrepreneurial learning show that rapid, low-cost validation leads to higher survival rates—not because everyone pivots perfectly, but because mistakes get caught while they’re small and cheap.

Before you dive into your project’s to-do list, take a pause and write down what you're assuming about your customers and your product. Now, make a short list of ten people who might represent your target user—even if it feels intimidating or awkward. Reach out and ask for a quick chat, not to pitch, but to genuinely listen to what they're struggling with, what annoys them, or what they wish existed. Let their words guide you—sometimes they’ll confirm something vital or reveal that your wildest ideas aren’t so important after all. This isn’t about finding validation; it’s about having your mind changed and discovering what’s actually needed. Give it a try this week, and let the insight you gain shape every move from here.