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.
Related Insights
Standard "discovery interviews" are often a form of "playing founder." It's arrogant to believe a few 30-minute conversations can yield the deep insights needed to build a game-changing product. True understanding comes from immersing yourself in the customer's work, not just casually interviewing them.
Unlike software, hardware iteration is slow and costly. A better approach is to resist building immediately and instead spend the majority of time on deep problem discovery. This allows you to "one-shot" a much better first version, minimizing wasted cycles on flawed prototypes.
In a crowded market, the most critical question for a founder is not "what's the idea?" but "why am I so lucky to have this insight?" You must identify your unique advantage—your "alpha"—that allows you to see something others don't. Without this, you're just another smart person trying things.
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 build an effective AI product, founders should first perform the service manually. This direct interaction reveals nuanced user needs, providing an essential blueprint for designing AI that successfully replaces the human process and avoids building a tool that misses the mark.