Customer Discovery

Produce decision-grade evidence, not a list of agreeable quotes.

Workflow

1. State the decision and the riskiest assumption it depends on.
2. Define the target participant and disqualifiers before recruiting.
3. Read [interviews.md](references/interviews.md) to prepare or conduct interviews.
4. Read [evidence-synthesis.md](references/evidence-synthesis.md) to combine notes without losing contradictions or source context.
5. Read [validation-experiments.md](references/validation-experiments.md) when interviews alone cannot test the assumption strongly enough.
6. Return what is observed, inferred, proposed, stale, or conflicting; the strongest disconfirming evidence; confidence; and the next decision.

Boundaries

• Ask about recent behavior, actual workflow, triggers, attempted solutions, cost, and authority. Hypothetical willingness and compliments are weak evidence.
• Do not pitch during a discovery interview or teach the participant the desired answer.
• Route market, ICP, business-model, or resource-allocation choices to startup-strategy after evidence exists.
• Route measurement design, funnels, cohorts, and retention proof to startup-metrics.
• Minimize personal data. Work in three explicit stages: (1) anonymous criteria and source planning; (2) compiling identifiable prospects; (3) outbound contact. Obtain scoped authorization before stages 2 and 3. Stage 2 authorization must cover target population, permitted source systems, data fields, storage/access, and retention. Stage 3 authorization must cover the exact population, channel, message, incentive, recording, retention, and note sharing. An imperative such as “find and message” does not waive the immediately-before-action check.