Build What People Crave, One Conversation at a Time
Today we dive into customer discovery and MVP testing for solo founders, turning uncertainty into clear signals that steer product decisions. You will learn practical outreach, interview patterns, lean experiments, and metrics that respect your limited time, budget, and energy while building momentum, confidence, and genuine customer relationships.
Start With People, Not Features
Before committing to long nights of coding, ground your efforts in lived problems and measurable outcomes. Solo founders win by understanding pains, triggers, existing workarounds, and willingness to pay. This approach saves months, reduces risk, and shapes a compelling narrative investors, collaborators, and early adopters can immediately recognize and rally around.
Warm outreach that earns replies
Reference a specific problem they’ve publicly discussed, keep the request under seven sentences, and clarify the benefit: learning, a benchmark summary, or a private demo later. Suggest two times, propose fifteen minutes, and make rescheduling effortless. Close with gratitude. If this resonates, share your outreach draft below for feedback.
Run interviews with structure and curiosity
Open with context and consent, confirm recording, and promise to share learnings. Start broad, move to specific episodes, and end with the smallest next step they would pay for today. Silence is your ally; let stories breathe. One founder learned pricing insights simply by waiting three extra seconds before speaking.
From Insight to MVP Slices
An MVP is a learning vehicle, not a small product. Choose experiments that rapidly test value and behavior: concierge services, wizard-of-oz workflows, clickable prototypes, or landing pages with clear commitments. Timebox each slice, predefine success metrics, and treat every build as a question whose answer strengthens or redirects your path.
Choose the smallest experiment that tests value
Target the riskiest assumption and build only what proves or disproves it. Use a manual backend to simulate automation, or a simple form that triggers a personal response. Many breakthroughs come from scrappy, honest experiments that reveal the real bottleneck faster than polished features ever could.
Craft success metrics before you build
Define a visible, falsifiable threshold: reply rate, signup-to-call conversion, activation within twenty-four hours, or willingness-to-pay signals like credit card capture or deposit. Decide in advance what you will do for each outcome. This precommitment prevents emotional overfitting and keeps decisions consistent, even when results are surprisingly mixed.
Testing Channels and Messages
Landing pages that validate demand
Lead with the job-to-be-done, show the before-and-after, and anchor value in measurable outcomes. Use a single call to action that indicates commitment, like requesting access or booking a call. A/B test headlines taken directly from interview quotes; the language your customers use is often the highest-converting copy available.
Scrappy paid experiments without regret
Cap budgets tightly, test few variables, and measure downstream behavior like calls booked or trials started, not just clicks. Iterate quickly or pause ruthlessly. Share your experiment setup with peers for critique. If you’ve run a micro-campaign before, comment with one surprising learning others could immediately apply today.
Community-led discovery loops
Participate where your audience already gathers. Offer helpful teardown posts, share anonymized insights, and invite small cohorts into structured trials. Track who engages, what resonates, and which promises attract follow-ups. Communities reward consistency and generosity, and the relationships you build there often outlast any single feature or campaign.
Iteration, Pivot, or Persevere
After every experiment, step back. Compare results to your predefined thresholds and the narrative emerging from interviews. If behavior changes are weak, the promise unclear, or acquisition brittle, pivot hypotheses or segments. When signals are strong, double down with focus, deepening value for the earliest believers who trusted you.
Weekly cadence that compounds learning
Reserve fixed blocks for outreach, interviews, experiment setup, analysis, and decision reviews. Maintain a living assumption backlog and a single-page decision log. End each week with a short retrospective and a forecast. Share your plan publicly to invite accountability, then report back here with one insight you discovered.
Simple tools that do not slow you down
Use lightweight stacks: a shared doc for scripts, a spreadsheet or Airtable for insights, Figma for prototypes, Typeform for forms, and privacy-friendly analytics like Plausible or PostHog. Integrate minimally. Fewer tools mean fewer excuses, faster experiments, and more time listening to customers instead of wrestling integrations.
Build a feedback community around you
Create a small circle of founders, advisors, and early users willing to review messages, designs, and experiment plans. Offer the same support in return. Set recurring check-ins, celebrate tries regardless of outcomes, and track introductions. Strong communities reduce emotional volatility and accelerate learning when doubt inevitably appears.