Answer key: Mostly A’s: You’re doing great! You’ve really nailed a key pain point for your core customer. Now it’s all about scaling—making sure your customers keep recommending you and digging deeper to ifnd out how you can make their experience even better. Remember to keep an eye out for surprises in your data or your customer surveys, so you’re open to opportunities to serve new customer personas or solve new problems for your core customers. “When we go out and visit customers and we debrief, I always ask the team two simple questions,” Crotfs says. “What surprises did you see, and what pain did you see?” Mostly B’s/C’s: You haven’t nailed it yet. Maybe your product isn’t solving an urgent enough problem, or maybe you haven’t zeroed in on your ideal customer. Focus on ifnding that one customer or one customer persona who absolutely loves your product and can’t live without it, and then build from there. Many companies have “a mediocre product but they have people using it, and they just go, go, go, and they never stop to ask: Does anybody love it?” says Crotfs. Finding that one perfect customer can not only help guide your product development, it can also motivate your startup team to new heights. “That one person, that one story can fuel a team for weeks,” Crotfs says. “This happens all the time—you’re looking at the data, you’re OK with being surprised. You might notice some outliers and think: maybe there’s another customer segment here we can serve.” 24