Stop Building. Start Living Their Pain.
Embed Yourself in the Customer's World
Most customer discovery fails because customers are terrible at articulating what they need.
They’ve normalized broken processes for so long, they don’t even see them as broken anymore.
You ask about pain points. They give you surface-level complaints that miss the real problems.
The result: You build for perceived problems, not the ones actually killing them.
The only way to build something people desperately need?
Stop being a founder. Become one of them.
This isn’t about scheduling customer calls or sending surveys.
It’s about sitting next to someone doing their job for weeks until you feel their frustration in your bones.
I talked to Pablo Palafox, Co-founder / CEO of HappyRobot ($60M+ raised from a16z), about this.
Early on, he spent weeks sitting next to logistics operators, watching them make the same phone call forty times a day.
Not interviewing them. Living it. Feeling the exhaustion from manual processes. Seeing the workarounds they didn’t even recognize as workarounds anymore.
“You have to be embedded in the customer. You have to fly over to them... become one of them.”
Here’s what happens when you embed yourself:
You see the spreadsheet they maintain because the “official” system doesn’t work
You notice they print emails to read them (and understand why)
You feel the moment their energy dies at 3 PM from repetitive tasks
You catch the micro-frustrations they’ve accepted as normal
Most founders treat customer discovery like journalism: quick interviews, documented insights, move on.
That’s why most startups build things nobody wants.
When you connect with potential customers, get off Zoom. Book a flight. Sit at their desk. Use their terrible software. Feel their actual pain.
The formula is simple. It’s just uncomfortable.
Stop theorizing about customer problems from your WeWork. Start living them.
Enjoyed reading this?
Then check out my conversation on the focal podcast with Pablo Palafox, the Co-founder / CEO of HappyRobot ($60M+ raised from a16z, YC, Base10)
Youtube | Apple Podcast | Spotify
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