founders paras chopra, chapter by chapter
47. Let Successful Customers Set Direction
Outlier users often discover the product’s highest-value use case before the company does.
The most successful customers have found a way to extract unusual value, sometimes through a behavior the product was never designed to support. Those patterns can reveal a feature, position, or even market that should be made explicit for everyone else. Facebook’s feed grew from observing users repeatedly checking profiles.
Define success behaviorally—meaningful use, retained value, or outcomes—not by praise. Interview outliers about the sequence of what they actually do, compare repeated patterns, then productize the strongest use case. Customers supply evidence; the company still has to infer the insight.
Original sketch and model by Paras Chopra. Read the source chapter.