In our article *What I learned building 20+ startups in 5 years we touched on the Three Levels of Customer Insight: Critical Pains, Jobs to be Done, and Zeitgeist.*
In this three-part article we'll unpack each of the three levels further, and show you how to discover your customer needs even before they do so themselves.
In The Ultimate Guide to Building Audience First we showed an audience is defined by shared goals, needs, and pains. I.e. a shared journey.
The three levels of insight help you better understand and define your audience. They will also help you spot opportunities for new products and services to sell to them.
In this article we will tackle the first level of customer insight: Critical Pains.
Most founder advice will tell you to focus on a customer’s pains. This is a good place to start, especially for inexperienced entrepreneurs, because it forces you to build something that solves a problem, versus just building.
Every product solves a problem.
A product that doesn't solve a problem is either waste, or art. (Although you could argue art addresses a Job to be Done – f.i. to signal intellect, or creating an atmosphere)
Though people occasionally purchase something that sparks joy, they more often spend money to kill a pain.