SETsquared Workshop: Finding Real Customers

Stop guessing who your customer is. James Lucas on finding the few people whose problem is urgent, and proving it before you build.
About this Event

Everyone says you need to know your customer. But how do you know who's actually going to buy what you're building?

This practical two-hour workshop explores how to identify customers with a genuine need, test whether a problem is worth solving and validate demand before investing time and resources in building your solution.

You'll look at why founders often fall into the build-first trap, and how to separate what you know about your customers from what you're simply assuming. You'll explore the importance of focusing on one problem, one customer type and one route to market, and learn how narrowing your initial target market can help you gain traction. You'll also develop the confidence to have meaningful conversations with potential customers, asking the right questions to understand their problems without turning every interaction into a sales pitch.

The session is highly interactive, with individual reflection, paired exercises and practical conversations throughout. You'll challenge your own assumptions, practise customer discovery and learn how to use the language your customers actually use to communicate your value. You'll leave with a practical validation experiment to run within the following seven days.

By the end of the session, you will have practical tools to help you:

• distinguish between what you know about your customers and what you're assuming;
• identify which assumptions need testing first;
• narrow your target market to a specific customer group and problem;
• have effective customer discovery conversations without pitching;
• recognise when a potential customer isn't the right fit;
• use customer language to strengthen your messaging and value proposition;
• develop a practical experiment to validate demand.
  

The workshop is led by James Lucas, a product and growth adviser who has spent his career building and commercialising startups. James works with founders on finding customers, proving demand and developing go-to-market strategies, and is a Product Adviser in Residence at SETsquared Bristol.