As companies grow, communication becomes fragmented across more people, increasing the risk of "translation errors." Regular, firsthand customer experience for all roles—not just founders—is essential to prevent internal models from diverging from customer reality.

Tock rejected traditional focus groups and instead embedded its software engineers directly into restaurants to work shifts as hosts. This forced immersion gave the engineering team firsthand experience with the end-user's pain points, leading to a far more intuitive and effective product than surveys could produce.

The company's first customer, Barry Feingold, did more than just provide feedback; he became an active evangelist. He personally drove the founders to his competitors' offices to make introductions and help them close deals, demonstrating the power of finding a true vision-aligned partner early on.

Don't jump straight to building an MVP. The founders of unicorn Ada spent a full year working as customer support agents for other companies. This deep, immersive research allowed them to gain unique insights that competitors, who only had a surface-level idea, could never discover.

The founder's number one piece of advice is to 'get on the plane.' In an era of digital communication, physically meeting customers is a powerful differentiator. He was shocked by how many customers said his was the only startup vendor to ever visit their office. This direct, in-person connection provides insights that competitors miss.

The only reliable way to understand a customer is to "forward deploy"—work alongside them in their actual environment. This direct experience of their job closes the context gap that interviews can't bridge, revealing unspoken needs and frustrations.

To truly understand a B2B customer's pain, interviews are not enough. The best founders immerse themselves completely by 'going native'—taking a temporary job at a target company to experience their problems firsthand. This uncovers authentic needs that surface-level research misses.

To find product-market fit, Augment's team shadowed logistics operators for 60 days. This revealed a deeper problem than leaders described: massive email noise from listservs used as a workaround for 24/7 coverage. Building for the operator's messy reality, not the CEO's summary, is crucial for adoption.

Instead of starting with a scalable platform, Decagon built bespoke, perfect solutions for its first few enterprise customers. This validated their ability to solve the core problem deeply. Only after proving this value did they abstract the common patterns into a platform.