021: No, getting customers is the wrong goal

Instead search for People in Pain

“How can founders get customers for a startup?” is a question with many wrong answers. The answers are all wrong because the question is wrong. The most likely outcome from trying to get customers is that you waste months or years seeking customers in vain.

Most startup ideas don’t get customers and pursuing a startup idea is a huge time investment. So the right question is “What are the chances of my startup ever getting customers?” -- a question you can answer in days.

When you’ve got a startup with no customers, your first step should not be to try to get customers. It’s too tedious and takes too long. Statistically, the most likely outcome is that you invest a year or more trying to get customers, with nothing to show for it. I can attest to this personally. Instead, you should look for an earlier signal.

Your best first step is to get the smallest reason to believe that success is possible

A metaphor: Think about creating a successful startup like another complex goal: playing baseball for the Yankees. These goals have high failure rates and require huge investments of time. So your best first step is to get a small reason to believe that success might be possible. To play for the Yankees, you should first answer the question: Can you get a bat to hit a ball? ⚾️ If you can, there’s a chance you could become a Yankee. If not, then you probably want to pursue a different sport. Of course, there’s lots more work to do beyond hitting the ball, but at least you have a reason to believe the time investment might be worthwhile.

For startups, the earliest signal of potential success is finding People in Pain™

As a first step for your startup, seeking an initial signal of a paying customer is too difficult and time consuming. I believe that anyone who’s ever been a customer of anything ever, always starts as a Person in Pain. So instead of trying to get customers, the best early signal is searching for People in Pain. If you can find people with expensive, excruciating Pain, then there’s a possibility your startup could get customers. If you can’t, the chances are doubtful and you probably want to pursue a different idea.

Searching for People in Pain is easier than trying to get paying customers, but it’s still really hard. Customers are easy to identify because their action (payment!) is visible. By contrast, People in Pain are invisible -- it’s not obvious who exactly is a Person in Pain. Another challenge is that a startup is fundamentally a knowledge-creation project -- and that knowledge is also invisible. As a founder of a startup with no customers, you’ve got two invisible challenges: you’re searching for an invisible component in a knowledge-creation project. This is the big idea we’ll unpack next.

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As of 2026, I’m publishing Nascent methodology, a few ideas at a time, in regular podcast episodes. This is the companion newsletter that summarizes the podcast. For a deeper dive, check out the podcast on Spotify / Apple Podcasts / YouTube.