What an interview can answer
A customer interview can help you understand a specific person’s recent experience, the alternatives they used, and the consequences of a problem. It cannot establish how many people will buy your proposed offer. Begin with a learning question, rather than a pitch disguised as research.
For example: “How do independent café owners replace menu images when dishes change?” is a manageable question. “Will people love my photography business?” mixes several claims and invites reassurance. The goal of the first conversation is to discover what happened, including evidence that the problem is already handled well.
Y Combinator’s official lecture by Eric Migicovsky emphasizes specific experiences and listening. The following interview plan and notes example are our own application, not a transcript or prescribed research standard.
Find people who can describe the event
Write a simple eligibility rule: an owner or employee who personally updated a café’s menu images in the past three months. Someone who likes cafés but has never done the task can offer opinions, but cannot describe that workflow firsthand.
Recruit through appropriate existing contacts, permission-based introductions, or a relevant professional setting. State who you are, what you want to learn, how long the conversation may take, and that there is no purchase obligation. Do not invent an academic affiliation or claim that you already serve customers.
Convenient recruits can still be useful, but record the limitation. Friends, customers from one neighborhood, and owners who volunteer may differ from the wider audience. There is no interview count that automatically validates a business. Avoid storing identifying details when anonymized process notes are sufficient; ask permission before recording or quoting anyone.
Use a short sequence, with room to listen
| Purpose | Prompt | Useful follow-up |
|---|---|---|
| Locate an event | Walk me through the last menu change you worked on. | When did the image update happen? |
| Understand the process | What did you do first, and what happened after that? | Who else had to help or approve it? |
| Find friction | Where did the process become difficult? | What did that delay or prevent? |
| Identify alternatives | How did you get the images you used? | What made that option worth choosing? |
| Check the summary | I heard that approval took longer than taking photos. Is that accurate? | What have I misunderstood? |
Do not turn the prompts into a rapid questionnaire. Follow the person’s sequence, allow silence, and ask for clarification when a word such as “expensive” or “slow” lacks context.
Rewrite the questions that steer the answer
“Wouldn’t professional photos help?” suggests the desired conclusion. Ask what happened to the photos last time instead. “Would you pay $100?” asks for a hypothetical promise. Ask what they used and paid for recently, then conduct a separate, honest offer test when appropriate.
“How much time and money did you waste?” assumes that the experience was wasteful and asks two things at once. Ask about time first. Then ask about spending. If the person says the process worked well, investigate why rather than attempting to convince them that a problem exists.
If you show a prototype or discuss an offer, mark that point in the notes. Reactions after exposure to your proposal are different from an unaided description of the existing workflow.
Turn one conversation into a careful note
Reported account: the owner says a staff member took photos in 40 minutes, while approval and uploading took two evenings. They used an existing phone and paid no photographer.
Interpretation: coordination may matter more than image capture. This is our inference, not something the interview proves.
Next question: would a clearly scoped package that includes agreed export formats reduce the actual bottleneck? Payment willingness is still unknown.
Across interviews, compare situations rather than counting every positive remark as a vote. Keep contradictory cases. One owner with an existing reliable photographer may be outside the initial segment, or may reveal that your supposed advantage is weak.
End with one sharper assumption
Write what changed in your understanding and what remains uncertain. Perhaps the next test should focus on approval and image handover, rather than buying a better camera. Use the hypothesis-writing guide to separate the delivery claim from a payment claim.
Then choose the appropriate next action. More discovery may be useful if the problem is unclear. If the problem is well understood and you can legitimately deliver a small service, an explicit offer can test a different question. Our interest and willingness-to-pay guide explains what the resulting signals can support.
Record only the necessary, non-sensitive findings in the canvas. An interview is a way to improve a decision, not a certificate that the market has been validated.
Your next useful step.
Open the Idea Validation Canvas, work through your own assumptions, and save a private copy as a JSON file.
Open the Idea Validation Canvas ↗Sources & scope
Consulted November 5, 2026. Sources support the definitions and methods identified in the text. Examples, exercises, and calculations are our own; they are not case studies or claims of customer outcomes.
General education, with US official resources where noted. This guide does not determine legal obligations, eligibility, or an individual financial decision. Read our editorial policy.