How we used user interviews to finally find a startup idea that worked
User interviews allowed us to pivot away from a “nice to have” solution to a “must have” solution and reach profitability.
The cover image was generated by Dall-E 3 (Prompt: Can you create a painting that is a highly abstract expression of startup founders having an epiphany in a user interview that looks like it was done by an impressionist?)
The original idea for Arno was something that could help busy professionals like Makoto perfect their English. The main mistake we made with our previous startup, Verium, was that we built something that no one wanted. This time around, we were dead set on avoiding that mistake, so before we focused on product development, we did a ton of user interviews with busy professionals from other countries but who were living in the US.
Everyone we interviewed said that they felt that a lack of English fluency was holding them back in their career. They all said that absolutely they would love to reach native speaker level. Of course they would check out Arno; it sounded like it was perfect for them! We gave them access to the prototype we had thrown together — and no one used it. A lot of people didn’t even sign up. This was confusing and frustrating. Why were people lying to us?
In our interviews, after people said that they absolutely wanted to become fluent in English, we started asking, “Great! What are you doing to actually make that happen?” What followed explained everything: They usually chuckled nervously and said something like, “Well, I guess nothing, really.” They had maybe thought about getting a tutor or getting some books, but that was it. What became clear is that becoming fluent in English is like a vitamin, not a painkiller; it’s a “nice to have”, not a “must have.”
We started spending a lot more time digging into the question, “When do you think you were most motivated to learn English?” With everyone we talked to, there was a specific moment: When they were preparing for an English proficiency test. If they didn’t get a certain score, then they couldn’t study abroad. That simple. So, people would spend a lot of time and money learning English in order to get the score that they needed.
We decided to pivot to help people get ready for English proficiency tests. We looked at the market and discovered this new test made by Duolingo that was growing very quickly yet had a very underdeveloped ecosystem around it. Two years later, and we’ve reached ramen profitability with our Duolingo English Test prep platform that’s been used by almost 200,000 students in over 200 countries.
How We Approach Initial User Interviews Differently Now
Here’s a summary of what we learned about how to effectively interview people when we are validating a new idea.
Be prepared to hustle to get people on the phone
Everyone says that it’s important talk to users. However, there’s very little advice on how to get users on the phone. We didn’t discover any silver bullets for this. We simply cold messaged a lot of people on LinkedIn and knew that maybe 2% would respond.
The only semi-hack we used is that Makoto reached out to Japanese immigrants in the US, because they’re people like him. This made him less of a stranger, and therefore made the cold message a little warmer. Anytime you can find something in common with the person you’re messaging, the more likely they are to respond.
In the same vein, you can reach out to alums from your university or even high school. A lot of schools also have alumni platforms where you can message people directly.
Another trick is that you can ask the people you interview to connect you with other people. (”Is there anyone else that you would recommend we talk to?”). This also provides some validation of your idea (more on that later).
Look for problems, not solutions
In general with startups, we’ve learned that we should spend a lot more time understanding user problems instead of thinking about solutions. This means that in user interviews, we just focus on understanding the problems the person is experiencing.
Most important, are they actually experiencing the problem we think they are? If they are, how acute is the problem? Why haven’t they solved it yet? Are other problems more important?
Being obsessed with problems is probably my biggest lesson as a founder, and user interviews are perhaps the best way to learn about problems.
Don’t look to interviews for positive validation
People will lie to you in interviews, for a variety of reasons. The main one is that they are being polite. What’s in it for them to be honest and critical of your idea? It’s much less awkward for them to simply tell you what you want to hear and then quietly ghost you after the interview.
If you can ask people questions so that it’s not clear what answer you want to hear, then you can get more honest feedback on your ideas. This is the genius core insight of The Mom Test. However, this is a lot easier said than done.
Ask users to take action in order to get positive validation
Actions speak louder than words, so it’s much better to get positive validation of your idea by asking someone to take action. This could be using your product. Even better would be asking them to pay. If someone gives you money, you know you have something.
A clever approach is to ask them to connect you with other people they think you should talk to. If people are willing to put their reputations on the line, this is a sign that they believe in what you are building.
Ask people about their actions
Because actions speak louder than words, in your interviews you should focus on what people actually do or not do. (Another shoutout to The Mom Test on this one).
In our case, we learned that people didn’t actually do anything to perfect their English. We also learned that people did a lot when they needed to pass an English proficiency test. These two insights allowed us to successfully pivot.
Follow the money
Perhaps the most telling action a person can take is how they spend their money. Think about your credit card transactions. Don’t they reveal a lot about how you actually live?
When someone is willing to spend money to solve a problem, this means that the problem is real because they’re willing to give up something valuable to solve it.
Go where the story leads you
We now go into user interviews with the mindset of journalists. We have a specific “story” we’re researching, but there may be more to the story, or a more interesting story all together, that we can discover. You have to be willing to deviate from your predefined questions and follow your curiosity. In our case, our curiosity about when people were actually motivated to learn English led us to discover the English proficiency test problem.
This will likely mean that you won’t get through all your pre-set questions. Don’t worry about that. You should be talking to enough people that even if your curiosity leads to some dead ends, you’ll still have lots of other interviews to glean valuable insights from.
This post was originally posted on our blog, Founders Confidential, in case you want to subscribe and follow our journey.
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Otto, that was a great article on conducting interviews. Do you know other ways to validate your idea? What works for you the best, besides it?
I have a question. How to talk to customer? I tried to approach many, but no one gave me a response. I have built saas but failed. Idk how to overcome it. If you guys have any suggestion I would love to hear
One of the smartest ways to validate your business idea isn’t by asking, “Would you use this?”—it’s by observing what people actually do. Inspired by insights from The Mom Test, we shift the focus from polite feedback to real behavior. Instead of fishing for compliments, ask potential customers what they’ve done in the past, what they’re currently spending money on, and whether they’d pay for your solution today.
Smart validation doesn’t come from words—it comes from action. Whether it’s signing up, making a referral, or pulling out their wallet, the truth is in the doing. Build your business around that, and you’ll save time, money, and guesswork.
Great insights! Thought I’d jump in and share some advice from my own journey building Cuppa, a modern customer support platform.
It’s been a wild ride. We actually started by building websites, and then spun up a platform to simplify setting up an eCommerce store. It was kind of like a lightweight version of Shopify. It got a bit of traction, but not much. Eventually, we scrapped everything and went back to the drawing board.
I remember that day so clearly. We were crammed into our tiny 100sqft office, debating whether we should shut down the service and try to build something more scalable. We all agreed we needed to—but we had no clue what that “something” was.
All we really knew was that our customers were struggling to manage their customers. But even that wasn’t super clear to us yet. So we decided to build a generic CRM and figure it out from there. As we shaped the product around a few of our existing users, it slowly started morphing into a shared inbox.
At that point, we only had around 10 customers. They were pulling us in all directions. We realized we needed more input—so we decided to talk to more potential users and see if we actually had something worth pursuing.
But we had so many unanswered questions:
Who do we target?
What role?
What industry?
What country?
As a startup, everyone says “niche down.” But no one really tells you how to choose where to niche down.
Fast forward a month later—we were stuck in a vicious cycle. Same handful of customers, a CRM-turned-shared-inbox product, and still no clear direction. So we gave it another shot. We picked a segment: agencies. And we reached out to COOs, figuring they might be the best place to start.
We followed the classic advice: talk to your customers, ask questions.
And we did. For two straight months, we spoke to over 100 agencies.
Most of them told us to go away. Brutal.
But the few that did speak to us, we asked things like:
“What’s your biggest workflow issue?”
“How are you currently handling X?”
The results? Honestly, horrible.
There was no consistent pattern in the responses.
Some cared about cost and wanted free tools.
Others were totally happy with their existing setup.
And some had issues, but those issues were mostly self-inflicted.
So... we were back to square one. What do we do?
We kept pushing. We tested other industries, different ICPs. Same story.
This went on for 6–8 months. Super slow. Super painful. We’ve got our scars from that grind.
The breakthrough came when we took a step back.
We revisited our old customers and the specific issues they were facing.
This time, we segmented by role and made a big decision:
Let’s focus solely on solving problems for customer support teams.
Forget making our product a generic product that fit in multiple workflows. Forget COOs, IT Managers, or anyone else. Just go deep here.
We repeated the same process—but this time in customer support.
The difference? People actually wanted to talk to us.
We rebranded the product from a “generic shared inbox” to a “simple and affordable customer support platform” and followed the Tally playbook—constantly asking for feedback.
As more people engaged, we started seeing clear patterns.
That clarity helped us shape the product around real, consistent pain points.
Now, we’ve reached 1000+ users—mostly startups that want a modern, more affordable alternative to Zendesk or Intercom.
So here’s the takeaway:
Yes—interviews and discovery calls are important.
But be careful—they can send you in circles if you’re not anchoring them in a clear hypothesis or direction.
Even now, I’m not sure what we could have done to speed things up.
But I do know this: everything we went through was part of the journey.
And I wouldn’t trade those lessons for anything.
Hope this helps someone else who's in that same “what the hell do we do now?” phase. You’ll get through it.
Great Insights, same here I build a SaaS and nobody used it, but then I learned a lot and why nobody was using what I build even despite my efforts on marketing. Then I came to know The Mom Test and how to get traction for my applications.
This article is really helpful and I would say it is exactly what I am searching for at the right time. And I know it is not very easy to get people to talk or ask questions. I mean if possible I would like to have a small conversation with you to discuss and share some good insights about the same thing and your experience would definitely help me gain good knowledge.
Linkdin - Nitish Poosarla
User interviews helped the founders of Arno pivot from an ineffective idea to a profitable one by identifying real user needs. Initially, they built an English fluency tool that users claimed to want but never used. Through deeper questioning, they discovered that people were only truly motivated to learn English when preparing for proficiency tests. This led them to develop a Duolingo English Test prep platform, which reached profitability. Their key lessons: focus on problems, seek real actions over words, and follow user spending behavior.
Great to see how you pivoted the idea by asking the right questions and getting to the root of the real issue.
Nicely done, and love the actual examples instead of canned generic advice that seems very much in abundance! The MOM Test book does a great job in pointing out how we are asking the wrong questions and tips to start asking the right ones. This is something we are going through as well, and I would say that the one thing we have gotten particularly better at is understanding if the solution is a vitamin or a painkiller for the prospective user/customer within 1-2 meetings. This can of course go both ways - either you are building the wrong solution or for the wrong market or both.
You make a great point about finding the right people to talk to! You may have the perfect product but you just haven't found the right niche of users yet.
I was greatly inspired by your sharing on how user interviews helped your startup. Indeed, accurately grasping user needs is the key to entrepreneurial success. The transformation from "nice to have" to "must have" is of great significance. I'm curious, during the interview process, how did you ensure that the feedback collected was real and in - depth, not superficial?
Ask a lot of follow ups! If I remember correctly, The Mom Test covers this. We had a lot of questions like, "That's interesting what you said there. Could you tell us more?" Just keep going until you really understand what the person is telling you.
Also, asking "Why?" can reveal a lot. It allows you go deeper into people's motivations and the problems they're really grappling with.
Solid breakdown! That pivot from ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have’ is what makes or breaks a startup. Totally agree—actions speak louder than words, and money talks. Love the journalistic approach to interviews too. Great insights!
Thanks so much!
Love it. Big fan of Mom Test and the way you executed the core insights from it to your unique situation. What’s brilliant about you guys is that you overcame the attachment towards your vitamin problem and carefully navigated yourself towards the painkiller problem. Most can’t do this & hence get trapped for years.
Totally -- you have to learn to kill your darlings. This is another reason why deeply caring about your users as real people (something I talk about in this article) can be so helpful. If your #1 priority is to help people, you're more inclined to stay focused on the problem and less inclined to become attached to any one solution.
Great insights here! The key takeaway for me is focusing on the problem instead of the solution. It's so easy to get attached to an idea, but real validation comes from understanding the pain point and seeing if people are willing to take action to solve it. Following the money and asking people to make real commitments (like connecting you with others or paying) is a solid way to gauge interest. The pivot to English proficiency tests sounds like a smart move. Thanks for sharing your journey!
Thanks for reading! I'm glad to hear that your main takeaway is to stay focused on the problem because it's been such an important lesson for me :)