Nobody Wants to Talk About Your Problem. That’s the Answer. | Garrick Van Buren

“We’re gonna have to do that anyway, and that’s the hard part. So let’s do it first.” — Garrick Van Buren Your team spent six months building something nobody asked for. Now the hard part (finding people who’ll pay for it) is still waiting for you. It’s just more expensive. On this episode of The Human Connection Podcast, Karl Pontau sits down with Garrick Van Buren: four-time SaaS founder, former corporate venture studio strategist, and the customer researcher whose work shows up in several marketing and product books, including Noah Kagan’s Million Dollar Weekend. Garrick makes the case for finding your customers before you build. He explains why an empty interview calendar is itself an answer, and why your customers will tell a third party what they’d never say to your CEO. Along the way, Karl and Garrick count how many times smart companies step on the same rake (spoiler: at least once more). What you’ll get from this episode: How to validate demand through warm introductions and real conversations before investing in a product build Why “we couldn’t find anyone who cares” is a cheap answer, and a pivot that beats sunk cost every time A jobs-to-be-done approach to customer research that gets useful answers from people who don’t know what they want The interview math: patterns start around six conversations, and a dozen per round usually gives clarity Why customers open up to a third party in ways they won’t with your sales team or CEO The question that decides everything: once you know what it’s worth to the customer, is it worth it to you to deliver? What to do when you need $10K per client and your most enthusiastic prospects top out at $5K No matter if your business is B2B or B2C, it’s H2H — human to human. Happy connecting. #HumanConnectionPodcast #H2H #StartupLeadership #B2BRelationships #RelationshipDrivenGrowth === You can connect with Garrick van Buren here: https://pricingfromthestart.com https://forstarters.substack.com You can connect with Karl Pontau here: www.vouchedconnections.com www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com   / kpontau      / @thehumanconnectionpodcast   Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about! =========== 00:00 Customer research patterns 00:43 Introduction to Garrick van Buren 02:24 Why founders repeat the same mistakes 03:34 Start with customer relationships 05:18 Asking better customer-research questions 05:53 Researching existing customers vs. new markets 07:00 Validating (or invalidating) your ideal customer 08:47 Pivoting before expensive product development 10:04 Why customers can’t always articulate what they need 11:18 Jobs to Be Done and problem-focused interviews 12:28 Customer research example: construction safety 14:38 Competition, alternatives, and behavior change 15:48 How many customer interviews are enough? 16:48 Turning insights into product and pricing strategy 18:36 Is the solution worth delivering? 19:10 Closing and where to connect