There Is Nothing Like a Customer—Why Silence is not Success

Not market research. Not competitor analysis. Not your brilliant intuition. There is no substitute for working with someone who actually has the problem you're solving.

The graveyard of products no one wanted

The most common thing you hear from failed startups is some version of: "We built a product that no one would use" or "We built something no one would buy".

These sound like the same failure, but they're subtly different. The first means you solved a problem that wasn't actually painful enough. The second means you solved a real problem but not in a way customers would pay for. Both failures share the same root cause: not enough time with customers before, during, and after building.

I've founded and sold three technology companies. At every one of them, the moments of clarity came from customer conversations, not strategy sessions.

"Here's a counterintuitive truth: the customers who push you the hardest create the most value."

Eighty parents and three plaster feet

Years ago at Sproutling, we built the first sensing, learning, wearable baby monitor. Before we wrote a line of code, we spoke to more than 80 new parents to understand their concerns.

We learned things we couldn't have guessed. Most parents weren't primarily worried about SIDS (the obvious fear). They were worried about the mundane stuff: Is the baby sleeping well? Is this normal? Am I doing this right? The anxiety of new parenthood wasn't dramatic—it was chronic and low-grade.

That insight shaped everything about the product.

I used to carry plaster molds of baby feet through airports to test form factors. Security agents would pull them out of my bag and give me the strangest looks. But those molds represented real babies with real parents. They were proof that there was a real customer.

We launched so early it was embarrassing. The Lean Startup calls this "minimum viable product," but that phrase sanitizes what it actually feels like. It feels like showing people your unfinished work and bracing for their reaction.

But here's the thing: those early, embarrassing versions generate the feedback that shapes the product into something people actually want. You can't iterate your way to product-market fit from inside a conference room.

Customer feedback is a privilege

“Getting customer feedback about expectations is a privilege... Silence is not success. Complaints are data.”

I recently reviewed hundreds of customer incidents escalated to our engineering team over a period of months. That's a huge volume, even for a large organization.

The largest category was bugs or feature gaps: places where customers expected something to work, but it didn't, either because of an actual software defect, an edge case we don't support, or a gap between what a customer expected our platform to do and how it actually behaved. Sometimes people call this "working as expected," but the customer would disagree.

Here's how I think about this: getting customer feedback about expectations is a privilege.

If we don't take that feedback and improve the product—quickly, not deferring it to some major overhaul scheduled in a far-future quarter—those issues will recur. Again and again. As we scale, they'll overwhelm our ability to keep up.

The alternative is worse: customers who don't complain. They just leave. Or they never complain because they never became engaged customers in the first place.

Silence is not success. Complaints are data.

"What's AWS? What's SaaS?"

When AppDirect started in 2009, Nicolas Desmarais and Daniel Saks would go to technology buyers at large telco companies and tell them that we were going to be the AWS of SaaS.

They'd say: "What's AWS? What's SaaS?"

It's possible to be too early. And when you're too early, the only way you know is by talking to customers. Market reports won't tell you. Your investors won't tell you. Customers tell you by staring at you blankly when you describe your product.

"Deutsche Telekom was our first platform customer. They're still a customer today. The things we learned from them about enterprise requirements, about scale, about what "production-ready" actually means—none of that came from a whiteboard. It came from operating in their environment and failing in ways that forced us to get better."

We bet on businesses using more and more software over time, delivered as a service, and bought through trusted partners. That bet took 10 years to play out as technology improved and customers changed how they bought. Things can take longer than you expect. The customers who stuck with us through those early years—when our product was rough and our pitch was confusing—taught us how to explain ourselves.

Deutsche Telekom was our first platform customer. They're still a customer today. The things we learned from them about enterprise requirements, about scale, about what "production-ready" actually means—none of that came from a whiteboard. It came from operating in their environment and failing in ways that forced us to get better.

The best customers are the hardest ones

Here's a counterintuitive truth: the customers who push you the hardest create the most value.

“When I look at our most successful customer relationships, they all share this pattern: early friction that forced us to improve, followed by trust that unlocked growth.”

Vodafone is one of our most demanding customers. They push millions of annual recurring revenue through our platform. Their GMV exceeded is measured in billions. We operate in dozens of countries together.

That scale didn't happen because they were easy to work with. It happened because they held us to standards we wouldn't have held ourselves to. They demanded features we didn't know we needed to build. They found edge cases we would never have imagined.

Not all demanding customers are worth it. There's a distinction between being hard because you're scaling, and hard because your goals are misaligned.

When I look at our most successful customer relationships, they all share this pattern: early friction that forced us to improve, followed by trust that unlocked growth.

Vodafone looked at building their own solution in-house. They chose to partner with us instead because of our expertise, flexibility, and capabilities. But we only developed that expertise and flexibility by serving customers who demanded it.

What customer obsession actually looks like

"The customers who complain are gold because they're giving you a roadmap."

It's not about being nice to customers or having good support (though those matter). It's about building a systematic practice of learning from them.

1. Before you build: Talk to dozens of people who have the problem. Not five. Dozens. You're looking for patterns, not validation. If you find yourself selectively quoting the one person who loved your idea, you're doing it wrong.

2. While you build: Get your ugly, embarrassing early versions in front of real users. Watch them struggle. Resist the urge to explain or help. Their confusion is signal.

3. After you launch: Treat every support ticket as product feedback. Categorize incidents. Look for themes. The customers who complain are gold because they're giving you a roadmap.

4. When you scale: The demands increase. Embrace this. The customer pushing you hardest today is teaching you what you need to know for the customer you'll win tomorrow.

Competition validates, customers differentiate

People focus too much on competition. When I hear a founder say "we don't have any competitors," I hear a big red flag. Either the market isn't valuable, or you haven't looked hard enough.

But here's the thing: business strategies are easy to copy. What's hard to copy is deep understanding of customer problems. If you're innovating, you want to be looking at how you can solve customers' problems the best, how you can deliver value in the best way—not what your competitors are doing.

Business strategies are easy to copy

The people who were building Clash of Clans aren't checking competitor apps every morning. They were obsessing over player behavior, over session length, over what makes someone come back. That obsession is their moat.

Your moat is the same: an understanding of customer problems so deep that you see opportunities others miss.

The team that builds the product

“I try to expose engineers to customers directly. Not filtered through product managers or support tickets, but actual conversations. When an engineer sees a customer struggle with something they built, it changes how they build.”

As a founder, you have to pay attention to every detail of the product. But it's the team that builds the product. And the team's relationship with customers shapes everything.

I try to expose engineers to customers directly. Not filtered through product managers or support tickets, but actual conversations. When an engineer sees a customer struggle with something they built, it changes how they build.

Most entrepreneurs think of the product as the first thing they're building. I think of the team as the first thing you're building. And a team that has direct contact with customers builds better products than a team that doesn't. Customer distance is the root cause of most product debt.

The long game

At AppDirect, we're now one of the largest subscription commerce platforms in the world. We process billions in GMV. We operate in dozens of countries.

None of that would exist without the customers who took a chance on us when we were small and rough. The ones who complained. The ones who demanded features. The ones who stuck with us through migrations and outages and growing pains.

There is nothing like a customer. Everything else is theory.

I've been building technology companies for over 15 years. Currently I lead global engineering at AppDirect. I'm always interested in hearing how other founders and product leaders build customer relationships—reach out if you have stories to share.

This article was reprinted from Mathew Spolin’s article on LinkedIn. Read his recent blog, How to Adopt AI Development at Scale: AppDirect’s Leap from 0% to Over 90% AI-generated Code, for more insights and wisdom.