To understand customer pain points and needs, startup founders should ask questions of functional managers, sales and customer service teams, and individual customers. Specifically, founders should ask what problems customers want solved, what customers would change about their business if they could, and what customers want to do but can't currently. By understanding customer pain and vision, founders can build technologies that truly solve problems customers are willing to pay for.

1. Tom Walker
Ask These
Questions to Really
Understand Your
Customer’s Pain

2. Your startup may have the
best technology
but if it doesn’t solve a problem that
real customers
are willing to pay real money for,
your business can’t succeed.

3. Ask the first question of yourself.
Who should I be talking with
to learn about the pain points
in the markets and
companies I hope to serve?

4. Talk to the
people
doing the work.
Functional managers with profit and loss (P&L)
responsibility live and breathe margins, pricing, and
costs.
Sales, marketing, and customer service
teams know better than many in the company what
their customers want.
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5. change one thing
about your business,
what would that be?
Every customer has this hot button.
Ifyoucould

6. Your customers have the
same concerns you do—
it’s just the specifics that are different.

7. What would you like to do
with your business that you
can’t do today?
In well-managed companies,
there are lots of individuals with vision.

8. From wish list to strategic plan,
the more you hear about the
direction of the company,
the better you can aim your
technology to match the pace.“
“