Validation SOPs › Customer Discovery

Stage 1 of 9

Customer Discovery SOPs

Customer discovery is the first stage of idea validation: you learn who has the problem, how they describe it and what they do about it today, before you design a single screen. Steve Blank named the stage in The Four Steps to the Epiphany, and the rule still holds: get out of the building. The 15 SOPs below range from a two-hour persona sprint to a month of ethnographic research. Start with customer interviews if you have never talked to a customer, add an online survey once you know which questions matter, and use market sizing to check that enough people share the problem to build a company on it.

All 15 customer discovery SOPs

• Customer Interview SOP

  A step-by-step customer interview SOP for founders: who to talk to, a copy-paste script, how to score answers and when you have heard enough.

  Customer Discovery Beginner $0-100

• Online Survey Validation SOP

  An online survey validation SOP for founders: who to survey, a 10-question template, how many answers you need and the numbers that count as a pass.

  Customer Discovery Beginner $0-50

• Ethnographic Research SOP

  An ethnographic research SOP for founders: how to watch customers where the problem happens, what to write down and how to turn field notes into a decision.

  Customer Discovery Advanced $100-500

• Social Media Listening SOP

  A social media listening SOP for founders: set up keyword searches, log public complaints and buying requests, and decide if a problem is loud enough to chase.

  Customer Discovery Intermediate $0-300

• Focus Group Validation SOP

  A focus group validation SOP for founders: when a group beats one-on-one calls, how to recruit and moderate 5 to 8 people, and how to score concept reactions.

  Customer Discovery Intermediate $200-800

• Customer Journey Mapping SOP

  A customer journey mapping SOP for founders: map how customers solve a problem today, stage by stage, and find the moment where your product can win.

  Customer Discovery Intermediate $0-100

• Persona Development SOP

  A persona development SOP for founders: build one customer persona from real research, test that it predicts behaviour and that you can reach 20 such people fast.

  Customer Discovery Beginner $0-50

• Market Sizing SOP

  A market sizing SOP for founders: calculate TAM, SAM and SOM bottom-up from customer counts and real spend, cross-check top-down, and write numbers investors trust.

  Customer Discovery Advanced $0-500

• User Story Mapping SOP

  A user story mapping SOP for founders: build a story map from customer research, check the backbone with real users and cut the thinnest first release worth testing.

  Customer Discovery Intermediate $0-100

• Competitive Customer Analysis SOP

  A competitive customer analysis SOP: mine competitor reviews, interview people who switched, and find the customers your rivals serve badly enough to win.

  Customer Discovery Intermediate $0-300

• Customer Empathy Mapping SOP

  A customer empathy mapping SOP for founders: fill Dave Gray's canvas from real interview evidence, test it with customers and pick the pains worth solving.

  Customer Discovery Beginner $0-50

• Digital Behavior Tracking SOP

  A digital behavior tracking SOP for founders: set up events, funnels and recordings on your validation pages, then read what visitors do instead of what they say.

  Customer Discovery Advanced $0-200

• Community Research SOP

  A community research SOP for founders: find the groups where customers gather, read their history, join in honestly and turn threads into interviews and evidence.

  Customer Discovery Intermediate $0-100

• Expert Interview SOP

  An expert interview SOP for founders: who counts as an expert, how to get 5 to 8 of them on a call, what to ask and how to separate industry facts from opinion.

  Customer Discovery Intermediate $0-500

• Customer Co-Creation SOP

  A customer co-creation SOP for founders: recruit lead customers, run 2 to 3 build sessions together and end with letters of intent or pre-orders.

  Customer Discovery Advanced $200-1,000

Other validation stages

• Problem Validation

  Prove the problem is frequent, painful and worth paying to fix.

• Solution Validation

  Test whether your proposed solution gets real commitment.

• Product-Market Fit

  Measure whether real users keep coming back and would miss you.

• Business Model Validation

  Check that the money side works: pricing, acquisition cost and margins.

• Technical Validation

  Make sure you can build it, run it and keep it secure.

• Financial Validation

  Turn the idea into numbers that survive scrutiny.

• Competition Analysis

  Know who else solves the problem and where you can win.

• Go-to-Market Validation

  Test the channels, message and sales process before launch day.