Try this thought experiment: Imagine you’re right. Imagine the grand promises you made to your investors are true, and the opportunity is bigger than anyone realizes. A huge mass of people are desperate for your product, if only they knew it existed. Your business is inevitable.

But discovery isn’t about getting marginally better; it’s about becoming categorically different.

Map your growth model, identify your North Star Find your rate-limiting step Discover your prospects’ “locksmith moment” Explain your value more clearly to customers

FinTech app Rebank realized that most of their prospects—all startups—had basic finance questions before they were ready for Rebank. So, they published a detailed free guide, “Finance for Founders,” that generated thousands of qualified leads and helped them grow 22X in 18 months.

Which of these, if it works, could have the biggest impact?

Key Driver: If it works, which of your key drivers will it most directly impact? Traffic? Conversion? Retention? Referrals? Activation?

Every startup works hard; that’s table stakes. The winners find and prioritize the right work and ignore everything else.

For example, Airbnb’s founders suspected better photography might improve rental rates. But sending professional photographers to every property would have been complex and expensive. Fortunately, Airbnb was founded by design students, so they grabbed their cameras and spent a weekend photographing only the listed apartments that were near their

Discussing your product: Above all, remember this is not a conversation about your product. Instead, you are trying to understand, with pixel-level detail, the journey that led this person to your product. The interviewee will want to talk about your product features, and you might like hearing that, but it shifts attention away from the customer’s