Talk to five customers this week — before you build anything else

A founder once asked me the single best piece of advice I'd give someone starting out in product. My answer was three words long.

Find more people with the same problem. Interviews, interviews, interviews.

It's not a clever answer. It's not a framework you can put on a slide. But it's the thing that, more than anything else, decides whether you build something people want or something you merely hope they want.

The math nobody wants to do

Let's quantify what you're risking when you skip research. A single feature — call it a month of one squad's time — costs you tens of thousands of euros in salary alone. Add the opportunity cost of everything you didn't build, and the bill climbs fast.

Now compare that to the cost of finding out whether anyone wants it: five conversations, thirty minutes each. Two and a half hours of your week. No designers. No engineers. No release.

When you put it like that, skipping interviews isn't "moving fast." It's the most expensive shortcut in product.

Why teams skip it anyway

Three reasons, and you'll recognize all of them:

• It feels slow. Talking to people doesn't produce a deployable artifact, so it reads as "not real work" next to a closed ticket.
• It feels scary. Customers might tell you the thing you've been excited about for two months is a solution to a problem nobody has.
• It feels obvious. "We already know what they want." You don't. You know what they said in a sales call eight months ago, filtered through your own optimism.

That second one is the real blocker. Research is uncomfortable precisely because it works. It tells you the truth before the market does — while you can still do something about it.

How to run interviews that actually teach you something

Recruit for the problem, not the praise

You're not looking for people who'll tell you your idea is great. You're looking for people who have the problem you think you're solving. Five of them, with the same pain, beats fifty random "sounds cool" reactions.

Ask about the past, not the future

"Would you use this?" is worthless. People are terrible at predicting their own behavior and lovely at being polite. Instead, ask what they actually did: "Tell me about the last time you ran into this. Walk me through it. What did you do? What did you try first? Why did that not work?"

Stories about real, recent behavior are data. Opinions about hypothetical futures are noise.

Shut up and let the silence work

The best insight usually arrives after you'd normally jump in. Ask your question, then wait. Resist the urge to fill the gap or — worse — to pitch. Your job in the room is to be the least interesting person there.

Make it continuous, not a "phase"

Research isn't a stage you complete before building. The best teams treat it as a steady drumbeat — a couple of conversations every single week, forever. That cadence is what keeps the Opportunity Solution Tree fed with real opportunities instead of assumptions. (More on that here.)

What you'll actually walk away with

After a handful of honest conversations, three things change. You stop arguing about features in the abstract, because you have real quotes to point at. You kill at least one idea you were emotionally attached to — and feel relieved, not defeated. And you find an opportunity you didn't know existed, hiding in plain sight in something a customer mentioned offhand.

That's the trade. A little discomfort and a couple of hours, in exchange for not betting a quarter of your team's life on a guess.

So here's the challenge: book five conversations this week. Not next quarter, when you've "got time." This week. The roadmap you save will be your own.