skip to content

← back to the plays

independence4 unconnected · 3 more authors in those circles
standing

contested · 15 claims against 3

applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

confidence

high

evidence

18 claims · 11 articles · 4 receipts

window

2010-06-14 → 2026-06-21

4 builders who never spoke to each other · contested

Use interviews to rule the idea out

Go into customer conversations trying to disqualify the concept rather than to hear that it is good, because an enthusiastic yes is only a maybe while a clear no is reliable. Recruiting twenty people to tell you the problem is not worth money costs a fortnight and saves years of building.

Where this splits

Most hold that interviews should kill weak ideas early, while one argues that for a consumer product listening to customers actively damages your direction.

  1. side 01 · 15 claims

    Interview customers to disqualify the idea before building

    Boris Jabes · Cory Zue · Jason Cohen · Justin Jackson · Tyler Tringas

    1. 1Use customer interviews to rule ideas out rather than to confirm them, since you never really know until something is in their hands, and ruling one out early saves months.
    2. 2Let interviews kill an idea before you build it, and count the saved years as the return.
    3. 3Interview customers against written hypotheses rather than asking leading questions or gathering loose impressions.
    4. 4Get answers from customers rather than from advisors, experts, analysts, polls on social media, historical data or what competitors are doing.
    5. 5Read interview answers asymmetrically: an enthusiastic yes is only a maybe, but a no is reliable, and one no can save you months or years of building.

  2. side 02 · 3 claims

    Do not let customer answers set your direction

    Alex Hillman · Keith Rabois

    1. 1Validation is worth doing, but do not stop at what customers say they want, because what a person wants and what a person values are frequently not the same thing.
    2. 2Buyers can name the feature they want but generally cannot see past it to the value they are chasing, so treat uncovering that as your job and not theirs.
    3. 3For a consumer product, interviewing customers does active damage. Do not let their answers set your direction.

What it returned

  • 50

    Targeting WordPress web developers before WP Engine existed: 50 requests, 40 people agreed, only one asked to be paid, and 30 of them went on to become customers.

  • Twenty interviews told him his marketing analytics concept was not strong enough, so he dropped it; the same method then validated WP Engine.

  • Cohen says this has happened to him repeatedly, including discovering that a market did not know the problem existed or had no budget for it.

  • Cohen says all of his own startups began this way and calls the assumption that it must be a business the most common origin story.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.

More in product

all product plays

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.