Stop guessing. Start listening
Let’s be brutally honest: your brilliant SaaS idea is probably a fantasy.
You’ve got a beautiful mockup, a clever name, and a Trello board full of features that you just know people will love.
But here’s the cold, hard truth that kills 9 out of 10 startups: 1Nobody cares about your features. They care about their problems. And right now, you’re just guessing what those problems are.
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User research is the cheat code. It’s the process of getting out of your own head and into the messy, complicated, and brutally honest world of your customers.
It’s how you stop building a product for yourself and start building a solution for them.
Forget the Lab Coats. This is What Research Actually Is.
The big guys will tell you that user research involves “ethnographic studies,” “contextual inquiries,” and a bunch of other fancy terms that require a PhD and a truckload of cash.
Forget all of that. For a startup, user research boils down to two things:
- Watching what people do. (The silent, creepy, but effective part)Listening to what people say. (The part where you actually talk to them)
That’s it. It’s not about running a perfect, sterile experiment. It’s about getting raw, unfiltered feedback so you can make smarter, faster decisions.
The “Get in Their Head” Playbook: A 3-Phase Attack
This is my tactical, step-by-step plan for doing user research on a ramen noodle budget.
Phase 1: The Scrappy Start (When You Have Zero Users)
You haven’t launched yet. You have no one to talk to. Perfect. This is where the real hustle starts. Your goal is to find where your potential users are already complaining.
The Reddit Recon: Find the subreddits where your target audience hangs out. Don’t post about your startup. Shut up and listen. Search for threads with words like “annoyed,” “frustrated,” “hate,” “wish there was,” “alternative to.” This is a goldmine of their raw, unfiltered pain points.
The Competitor Review Heist: Go to the review pages of your competitors (G2, Capterra, even the App Store). Ignore the 5-star reviews.
Ignore the 1-star reviews. The real gold is in the 2, 3, and 4-star reviews. These are from actual users who see the potential but are pissed off about specific, missing features or clunky workflows. Steal their feedback. That’s your first feature list.
The “Fake Door” Test: This is my favorite sneaky win. Set up a simple landing page that describes your “product” and has a “Sign Up for Early Access” button.
Run a tiny, $50 ad campaign on Google or Facebook targeting your ideal customer. The ad isn’t to get signups. It’s to see if anyone even bothers to click.
If you spend $50 and get zero clicks on an ad for a “tool that solves X,” then guess what? Nobody cares about X. You just saved yourself six months of coding.
Your Search Formula Cheat Sheet
Don’t just search. Hunt. Copy and paste these formulas into Google to get straight to the good stuff.
To find pain points on Reddit:
site:reddit.com/r/[target_subreddit] “alternative to” OR “frustrated with” OR “wish I could”
To steal competitor weaknesses from review sites:
site:g2.com OR site:capterra.com “[competitor_name]” “missing” OR “wish it had” OR “doesn’t do”
To find general problems on forums:
inurl:forum “your industry” + “how do you handle” OR “annoying part”
Phase 2: The Eavesdropping Toolkit (You’ve Launched)
You have a few users trickling in. You’re not ready to get on the phone with them yet. It’s time to watch them from a distance.
Install Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity: These are session recording tools. They let you watch videos of what your users are actually doing on your site.
You will be horrified. You’ll see them rage-clicking on things that aren’t buttons and completely ignoring the main feature you spent a month building.
It’s painful, but it’s the most honest feedback you will ever get. And it’s free.
The One-Question Survey: Don’t send a 20-question survey. Nobody has time for that.
Use a tool like Hotjar or Survicate to pop up one simple question when a user is about to leave: “What’s the one thing that nearly stopped you from signing up today?” The answers will be pure gold for your marketing copy.
Read Your Support Tickets: Every email to your support inbox is a user telling you exactly where your product is failing. Treat it like a treasure map to your next feature.
Phase 3: The Direct Hit (Actually Talking to Humans)
This is the final boss. It’s scary, but it’s where the biggest breakthroughs happen.
- The 5-Person Rule: You don’t need to talk to 100 people. The Nielsen Norman Group, a bunch of smart UX people, proved that you’ll uncover 85% of the core problems by talking to just five users. So, no excuses.The “Bribe”: Email your most active users and offer them a $25 Amazon gift card for 20 minutes of their time. It’s the best money you will ever spend.The Script: Don’t ask, “Do you like my product?” or “Would you pay for this?” Those are useless questions. Instead, ask about their past.“Walk me through the last time you tried to solve [the problem].”“What was the hardest part of that?”“What other tools have you tried? What did you hate about them?”“If you had a magic wand, what would you change about your current workflow?”
Your goal is to get them telling stories about their problems. In those stories, you will find the truth.
The Bottom Line
Your users are wandering through a dark forest, and your product is supposed to be the map. User research is the act of asking them where the scary monsters and the hidden pits are, so you can draw a better map.
Stop guessing. Stop debating features in a Slack channel.
Pick one tactic from this playbook and do it this week. The answers are waiting for you. You have to be smart enough to go listen.
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The No-BS Guide to User Research for SaaS Startups was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
