Dharmesh Shah says the best product ideas come from acute customer pain. Skip the pitch and ask open-ended questions like "What kinds of things are keeping you up at night?" to find what actually needs solving, not what customers think you want to hear.
A great idea comes from some acute pain a customer's feeling. So what are signs that a customer is feeling acute pain? Here's my possibly controversial advice here, which is once you've identified a segment of customers, get the conversations, and then instead of pitching an idea or pitching your product, just ask them the open-ended question, what kinds of things are keeping you up at night? And if you want to know what people's pain is, ask them what their pain is versus asking them whether this particular thing will solve a pain, because then they're going to look for, look for ways to please you.
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