Founders are wrong about “talking to customers”
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As a founder, you’ve probably heard this advice a thousand times:
“Talk to your customers.”
But here’s the part they don’t say:
Talking is easy.
Listening — actually listening — and know what to build from it — is the hard part.
By the end of this 3-minute read, you’ll know:
Why customers don’t say what they mean (and how to spot what they really want)
A list of questions that uncover real pain.
And the dead-simple trick to instantly tell if a feature request is worth building
I actually learned this the hard way.
In my early days of What A Startup, I thought I was doing everything right.
I asked founders what they needed.
I sent out surveys.
I asked for feedbacks and suggestions.
I had Notion pages filled with responses like:
“Maybe a directory of investors?”
“A place to post our product launches.”
“Some kind of founder Slack group?”
So I started building what they asked for — feature by feature.
And guess what?
Crickets.
No one joined the Slack.
No one updated their profiles.
No one shared their launch.
That’s when it hit me:
They weren’t lying — but they weren’t telling me the whole truth either.
Here’s what I finally realized:
Customers don’t speak in solutions, they leak pain.
They rarely say what they really mean.
Not because they’re lying — but because they don’t always know.
People aren’t product managers.
They’re just trying to get through their day.
Your job as a founder isn’t to build what they ask for — it’s to decode what they feel.
Let me explain.
The feature trap
- EXAMPLE 1
Imagine a user tells you:
“I wish your app had dark mode.”
You write that down.
Dark mode — ✅.
But what if the real issue wasn’t “dark mode,” but:
They’re overwhelmed by the brightness at night
They don’t feel “in control” of the interface
They don’t trust the product yet, so they want to tweak it
The request was dark mode.
The emotion was discomfort or mistrust.
That’s what you need to solve.
- EXAMPLE 2
Let’s say you sell a beautifully designed productivity planner.
A customer tells you:
“I wish it had more pages for goal setting.”
You jot it down.
More goal pages — ✅.
But here’s what they might really be saying:
“I feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start.”
“I want the planner to motivate me, not just organize my tasks.”
“I’m afraid I won’t follow through, so I’m looking for structure.”
The request was more goal-setting pages.
The emotion was confusion, self-doubt, or a need for support.
If you only add pages, you miss the bigger opportunity:
→ To create a product that guides, not just organizes.
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Here’s a trick I started using that really changed the game:
When someone talks about your product, watch their energy.