How to talk to customers when you hate talking to customers

The single most common pattern I see in technical founders is the avoidance of customer conversations. Not because they're bad at them. Because the conversations feel slow, awkward, and beside the point compared to the satisfying loop of writing code and watching it work. Building feels productive. Talking to a stranger about whether they'd maybe use a thing doesn't.

The avoidance is rational in the small. It's catastrophic in the large. Every month you spend building without conversations is a month you might be building the wrong thing, and the wrong thing built well is still the wrong thing.

If you hate the conversations, don't try to love them. Lower the bar instead. The bar founders usually set for a customer conversation is too high. They schedule a 30-minute video call, they prepare a script, they record it, they take notes, they write a follow-up. Of course it feels like a slog. You've built a full ceremony around something that doesn't need one.

The version that works for founders who hate customer conversations is a single message. Not a call, not a survey, not a research session. A short, specific message to someone you already know who has the problem, asking one specific question about how they handle it today. No agenda. No follow-up call. Just the question and whatever they write back.

Do that five times this week to five different people and you'll have more signal than a quarter of formal interviews usually gives you. The information is the same. The packaging is different. The packaging is what was killing you.

When you get a reply that surprises you, then schedule a call. The call has earned its overhead because you already know there's something there. The call without the message first is the part you hate, and you're right to hate it.

This connects to a question I answer in depth: How do I know if my startup idea is worth building and How do I validate a product idea before building it.