Jason M. Lemkin argues that founders should actively engage existing, renewing customers because they are highly informed about important product feature gaps; meeting top customers revealed actionable priorities that led to product improvements. He also emphasizes the role of mentors and warns that founders often retreat from customer contact during hard times when engagement is most needed.
Your existing customers, if they've renewed, if they're using your product, if they're active, they're highly engaged, they are thinking about the problems you're solving. They know your feature gaps, not all of them, but they know the ones that matter to you and they know the things, at least from their perspective. And if you could just get that done, if you could just get there, it would be a game changer. And my old boss and mentor was right and I went out and did that and met with all of our top customers, the bts, the ges, the Comcast and others. And I just learned so much. I learned, really, it was a kick in the arse to go out and build some of the core gaps that we still had and it worked. Mentors are so important. I give this advice again and again and I see way too many founders, when times are tough, retreat. I see this nine times out of ten, they hide, they don't get out and visit customers, they. They retreat, they cut the burn.
