Solo Founders #8: Your Customers Say It Better

Author

Kieran Ryan
September 17, 2025

Hey Solo Founders,

I host 1:1 office hours in the Solo Founders Program and decided to share key insights from these sessions.

If you have a question about being a solo founder or facing a startup challenge, reply to this email. I’ll publicly respond to some anonymized questions that could benefit the broader community.

— Julian

The past few weeks have been busy at SFP. We kicked off our second cohort, SFP F25, and hosted the first-ever “Passing of the Torch” retreat. This retreat brought together the six new F25 founders with our inaugural S25 cohort on a farm north of SF.

The new group got to see what’s possible in three months, and the first cohort — now lifelong friends — welcomed them.

We’ll share more updates about both SFP cohorts soon. But for now, let’s discuss lessons from SFP Office Hours.

Your customers can describe your product better than you.

The best founders I know relay their customers' voice instead of pitching their products.

Instead of vague statements like "customers are begging us for this product" or "we haven't spent a dollar on marketing - all our growth is inbound/organic," they share specific examples:

These businesses are severely understaffed. As my customers put it: "The work doesn't pay well, it's not particularly fun, and it even carries long-term health risks — of course we're understaffed."

These owners spend countless hours trying to solve this problem, but they run into the same issues — and it's getting worse. My new friend Dan, a business owner in Mill Valley, spent two hours walking me through his workflows and failed fixes he's tried. People like Dan are genuinely excited that I'm building a dependable solution because their businesses that run on thin margins depend on it.

This works because:

  1. It uses the customer's actual words.

  2. It shows the problem through their eyes.

  3. It lets the audience draw their own conclusions.

Of course, you can only tell stories like Dan's if you actually know your customers. Trust is built in the trenches — texting, emailing, visiting their stores, grabbing dinner, etc.

When customers see you as someone who genuinely cares, they'll open up, give feedback, introduce you to others, and sometimes ask to invest. You accomplish this by using their words and phrases to describe their problems and your solutions.

Using your customers' language isn't unique to startups. Arnold Schwarzenegger used this technique to promote his movies. He attended test screenings and listened to audience reactions. Then he'd use those phrases in his promotional interviews. By echoing the language of his target audience, his message resonated more powerfully.

Whether you're building a startup or promoting your art, the principle is the same: listen carefully to how your audience describes your work. Use those words and phrases yourself — it's proof you truly understand what they care about.

Thank you for reading and helping change the narrative around solo founders.

Solo, together.

— Julian, Kieran, and the SFP team