Three prospects can praise the same product while describing three different reasons to buy it. Treat those reasons as separate jobs until real usage, renewal, and willingness to pay show that they belong to one market.
In 1985, Coca-Cola executives had evidence that people preferred a sweeter formula in blind taste tests. Roberto Goizueta, then chairman and CEO, backed the decision to replace the original formula in the United States. The company launched New Coke in April without knowing whether preference in a sip test would survive contact with everything else customers believed they were buying.
It did not.
The test measured taste, while customers bought continuity
New Coke performed well enough in research to justify a consequential call. Yet customers were judging more than the liquid.
Some wanted the taste they already knew. Some wanted the ritual attached to the familiar bottle. Others wanted Coca-Cola to remain the American product they remembered. Those jobs could produce the same purchase in a supermarket, but they did not produce the same response when the formula changed.
Coca-Cola restored the original formula as Coca-Cola Classic 79 days after launching New Coke. The company’s own account of the episode documents both the taste-test confidence and the scale of the rejection.
The lesson for an early-stage founder is narrower than “listen to customers.” You need to know what customers are asking the product to preserve, remove, or enable. A positive response tells you that something matters. It does not tell you that everyone values the same thing.
One demo can hide three buying decisions
Picture three calls on the same morning.
A founder in Accra praises an AI operations tool because it could delay an engineering hire. A small business lead in Berlin likes the same tool because it could reduce missed follow-ups. A product manager in Lagos wants it because the demo could help secure internal approval for a broader automation budget.
All three say, “This is useful.”
Those words look like demand in a notes document. They conceal three different jobs:
The founder is buying runway.
The business lead is buying operational reliability.
The product manager is buying evidence for another decision.
Each buyer may need different onboarding, proof, pricing, and product behavior. The founder may accept rough edges if the tool removes enough manual work. The business lead may care more about predictable handling when data is incomplete. The product manager may need reporting that makes the outcome legible to someone who never touches the product.
If you combine those reactions into one market, the roadmap becomes a negotiation between unrelated priorities. One buyer asks for integrations. Another asks for stricter controls. The third asks for a presentation-ready report. The team calls all three requests “customer feedback” and starts building whichever one arrived most recently.
That is how apparent traction can spend runway without producing a repeatable sale.
Record the decision behind the compliment
After a demo, I care less about whether someone liked the product than about what they can now decide.
Ask what they would do if the product disappeared tomorrow. Would they hire someone, keep using a spreadsheet, tolerate the missed work, or abandon the project? The alternative reveals the job more clearly than another request for features.
Then ask what event would make them pay. A founder may pay when the tool postpones a hire. An operations lead may pay after it handles a full month without dropping a task. A product manager may pay only after another stakeholder approves the budget.
These are concrete thresholds. They also expose false agreement.
This is the same reason Ruth’s refusal mattered in AI Product Validation: What Ruth’s Refusal Taught Daniel About Building for Demand. Interest becomes useful when it changes a decision. Until then, it remains a signal that needs interpretation.
I would keep a simple record for every serious prospect: the job they described, the alternative they use now, the event that triggers payment, and the evidence they need before trusting the product. After ten conversations, group buyers by those answers rather than by company size or location.
If one group keeps buying for the same reason, you may have a market. If three groups praise the product but require different proof and different product behavior, you have three bets competing for one runway.
Choose the job before expanding the product
The safest early choice is usually the job you can serve repeatedly with the product you can support now.
That may mean declining a credible overseas contract because its requirements pull the team away from the roadmap, the tension explored in Kofi’s Overseas Buyer. One Contract Could Cost Him Two Engineers.. Revenue can validate a job, but custom work can also disguise a separate services market.
Coca-Cola’s taste tests answered a real question. The company learned that the purchase carried meanings the test had not isolated.
Before adding the next requested feature, return to the last three prospects who praised the product. Write down what each one was trying to avoid, what decision they needed to make, and what they would pay to change. If the answers differ, stop counting compliments together.
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