There’s a mirage deceiving founders in the AI era: Mistaking speed for traction.
The allure of vibe-coding an MVP in a few minutes offers a tempting shortcut past the hard work of figuring out *why* you’re building something and *how* to build it best. The problem, the solution, the team — these are the core company-building jobs you can’t outsource. But many founders figure they can adjust them on the fly in favor of racing to market. Just as it’s easier than ever to ship a product in record time, it’s easier than ever to build a product no one wants and a company no one wants to join.
Jeanette Mellinger argues today’s founders are zooming past a step in their scramble for
: finding
product-market fit__problem-solution fit,which includes the often-invisible yet critical component of founder fit. “Problem-solution fit means finding a deeper customer need that you’re uniquely positioned to solve, and building for it with better early signals and stronger team alignment from the start,” she says.
How? By taking a page from the UX research playbook.
But you don’t have to sacrifice speed for depth. Think of it this way: Thoughtful upfront research helps train your intuition — so you can move faster and with more intention as you scale. “It’s even easier to speed in the wrong direction really fast with AI,” she says. “I want to help founders build *velocity, *which is speed in the right direction.”
Mellinger previously shared her detailed customer discovery framework with us, and now, she’s back with a research toolkit for finding stronger problem-solution fit, adapting her UX research and behavioral psych expertise for the founding journey.
“After working with dozens of founders and early-stage teams to uplevel their customer discovery skills, I’ve found that there’s still more work to do *beyond* solely focusing on the customer as they explore ideas,” she says. “The same tools that can help us get to know our customers can also help us do the essential but often unspoken work of self-discovery, which is just as crucial for building companies that last.”
In this exclusive interview, Mellinger starts by making the case for why finding problem-solution fit should predate selling — and even product building. She then breaks down the three phases of discovery, along with a comprehensive list of research methods and questions for three critical audiences: your customers, your team and yourself.
on Notion:
Whether you’re embarking on a blue-sky brainstorm, already in build mode or contemplating a pivot, she has the structure to help you pick your direction. Let’s dive in.
Why you need stronger problem-solution fit before you hit the market
Imagine a Bobo doll — the life-sized roly-poly toy with a round, heavy bottom. You can knock Bobo from any angle, and it will waver, but it won’t fall down. It stays balanced thanks to its weighted base.
“The components that make up problem-solution fit are your base as a team and company,” she says. “You take a week or a month to figure out your vision, your values and how you work. And when you’re lost, you come back to the foundation that you as a team or as a founder put together, so you can apply these principles to the latest thing you’re building.”
Mellinger is a fan of IDEO’s way of describing a good business: it’s desirable, it serves a human well, it’s economically viable and it’s something that you can technically deliver.
“When I joined Uber, I was part of the ‘Uber Everything’ group, which is what eventually turned into Uber Eats. The question we had to answer was, ‘What else could Uber do?’ And as I talked to people who’d been there for a long time, they’d say, ‘Oh, when we experimented with new businesses, they didn’t work. I see now they failed because they’d only gotten two of those three things,’” says Mellinger. “Usually the two that people focus on are the business case and technical feasibility.”
In recent years, startups have received the memo that the desirability component is make-or-break. But Mellinger has noticed that founders don’t always understand what building something people want actually entails. “Addressing sharp pain points is only one dimension. You can build something that’s ‘desirable’ but not really needed. Or if people can’t figure out how to use it, or the inertia of behavior change is too strong, then the product won’t go anywhere,” she points out.
Problem-solution fit is the intersection of who you are as a founder, a burning problem you’re well-suited to solve and a solution that tackles the problem well.
Finding this intersection isn’t a linear process. “Problem, solution and fit are all different steps, but you can't think about them in isolation from one another. You need to think about each one at every stage," says Mellinger. “And the silent first step is the founder. Before thinking about the problem, you've got to start with the founder.”
Here’s how Mellinger breaks down the goal of each overlapping circle:
Founder:Understand how to assemble a connected, resilient team that knows what they’re uniquely suited to build and the conditions they need to do it.
Problem: Deeply understand your target customers’ core needs, behaviors and workflows.
Solution: Build a solution that’s differentiated, usable and easily integrated.
Fit:This is the- __first level of product-market fit__- __customer discovery tools
Founders are constantly being told to change directions. You could run after your tail forever if you don’t have a center to come back to.
The three phases of deep research
Going through each of the steps to find problem-solution fit requires different levels of research. Mellinger says this will involve constant altitude shifting and changes of pace, inward reflection and in-depth conversations, blending methods from UX research, design and behavioral psych — techniques that aren’t often deployed in a startup setting, but that she’s found to be incredibly productive for founders.
Here’s a breakdown of her (handily alliterative) three phases of research.
Incubate: Fight the urge to build hurriedly to allow richer ideas to surface
There’s a reason the best ideas often arrive when you’re going for a walk, washing the dishes or taking a shower. “Incubation leans on what we know about where good ideas come from, along with UX research methods of observation and lighter secondary research. Look at how our brains work: Great ideas don’t happen on schedule. True insight takes time, and pops up in unexpected ways,” says Mellinger.
But that doesn’t mean bringing your discovery to a complete standstill. “Incubation is a conscious activity,” she says. “It just takes time and other associations to connect ideas in new ways.” A meta-analysis (a technique that draws conclusions from multiple studies) found that taking breaks — or incubating — can significantly improve creative performance.
that looked into the phenomenon of “hot streaks” across artistic and scientific careers found that the highest-impact work often follows seemingly unproductive periods.
Another study__So don’t even think about building anything in this phase. “When you move without ever stopping, it’s less likely that truly original ideas will emerge,” she says. “And there are some really lightweight ways to get to know a space and let these richer insights develop.” (More on those exact methods for incubation below.)
Immerse: Uncover more differentiated ideas and insights faster with focused sprints
This is where you’ll spend time exploring and codifying the most intriguing ideas from the incubation phase. “Immersion is about going deeper, not necessarily slower,” says Mellinger. “And it’s the perfect complement to incubation. In an ideal world, you toggle between both. Immersion helps you explore and codify quickly, but then also plants seeds for future ideas, kicking up even more incubation you can leverage later.”
Focus and depth will be more impactful than volume here. “I love the power of a really well-designed sprint. A focused week in the market with your customers can get you there faster than hundreds of disparate conversations with other customers,” she says.
‘I’ve spoken with hundreds of customers’ sounds sexier than, ‘I’ve had deep immersion with five.’ But you can get more out of an in-context immersion with five in a week or two than wandering conversations over months with dozens of customers.
Integrate: Build for behavior change (and be realistic about the power of inertia)
Integration means acting on the ideas you explored during immersion and incubation to plan how you'll build a solution that isn’t just differentiated, but easy to incorporate into a user’s life. Sounds simple enough from a product perspective. But getting humans to change their behavior is anything but.
Building a product is ultimately a human psychology problem. “Meaningful behavior change is required to get most products and processes off the ground, and it’s a lot harder than it seems,” says Mellinger.
The trick with this step is being realistic about — and deeply understanding — the hurdles you must overcome to get your customers to use your solution. “This is where you bring in tools to get to know humans. We know a lot about what motivates us through behavior change models, or in this case, asking someone to read your email or try your product — to do anything different.”
Behavioral research is a well to draw from here. Mellinger points to two behavior changes models to build on that work especially well in the product space:
The Fogg behavior model__- .Stanford professor Dr. BJ Fogg created this simple formula that results in behavior change: B=MAP. Behavior happens when Motivation, Ability and a Prompt collide at the same time. Does your customer- *want*to use your product, and is it- *easy*for them to use it — and importantly, do they have a- *reason*or reminder to start using it? If you fail to get your desired behavior, you’re probably missing one of these three things.
The Hooked behavior model__- .Inertia is a powerful force, and building a product people want to use more than the thing they already use is an uphill battle. Nir Eyal, who conceived this model building on Fogg’s, says that a new product must be- *9X better*to escape the inertia of using the incumbent solution.
The integration phase is also a good time to study your incumbents. Inertia might explain why customers might be lukewarm about trying a new solution.
Building for behavior change has only gotten more challenging when practically every buyer and consumer is inundated with options. “You can come up with a great idea, but if you don’t honor the basics of behavior change, the product might not take off — because it wasn’t super easy to incorporate into their already-full lives,” says Mellinger.
Building something great doesn’t mean people will adopt it. There’s too much else going on.
And your research won’t be exclusively focused on your customers. You need to know and build around your *own *behavior. “You can apply the same skills for building a more behavior-centric product to make your work more motivating for you and your team,” she says. “For example, if you want to build a values-centered company, you can be smart about how you weave those values into both the product and your team’s incentives.”
Apply these methods to find problem-solution fit
So which methods can get you there? And how much time should you spend on this research?
“I'm not telling folks to take a year before you launch,” Mellinger says. “Doing research in a product context is a balance of the stakes, your resources and what you need to achieve. You can do so much in a focused week, month or quarter, depending on the clarity you want or the gaps you have to fill.”
She breaks down each component of finding a fit for the founding team, problem and solution. She applies the research phases of incubation, immersion and integration to each of these elements, providing the questions you should be asking yourself to kick off each phase of the journey, and the assets you and your team should aim to produce together.
Your three phases of research will look different at each step, alternating introspection with interviews, observation with sprints. Moving through a mix of structured exercises will help you dial up your confidence in choosing the right problem, solution and team. And you don’t have to use every single method listed here — take your pick based on where you want to go deeper.
Not sure where to start? Take Mellinger’s assessment to benchmark your startup’s problem-solution fit and figure out which research methods might be most impactful for you and your team.
Founder
The goal: Assemble a team that’s aligned, connected and resilient, and knows how and what it builds best.
You won’t ship your founding team, but you can still draw on Mellinger’s research methods to uncover the right problem this specific group should solve and the exact ways they’re best suited to do that. “If you don’t have a solid team, it’s harder to execute on your brilliant ideas well,” she says. “And it’s a missed opportunity if you don’t incorporate what you do uniquely and exceptionally well into your problem choice and solution.”
To kickstart incubation, and to get a sense of how well you know yourself as a leader or team, start by asking yourself one or more baseline questions.
Baseline questions to answer:
(Take ~5 minutes to 1 hour)
Why do you want to work on this?
Would you be willing to work on this with this founding team for more than 10 years? Why or why not?
What can you not help but do or think about — even when your time is constrained?
How do you build or lead best? What helps you be most effective? Stay focused? Sane? Keep going?
Mellinger says that the second question is a powerful one to ask yourself — and potentially incalculably time-saving if the answer is no. “I asked this to a friend who's trying to start a company. She chewed on it for a little bit and was like, ‘Absolutely not. I definitely don’t want to think about this topic that long.’ That alone got her to save who knows how much time down the road,” she says.
Incubate: Build awareness around your strengths and behavior as a founder by exploring your four “zones”
(Take ~1 hour to 1 month)
Take one day to one month of observations to map out the activities that you excel at and give you energy with the four zones framework.
“This exercise is derived from a book called __The Big Leap__*,*” says Mellinger. “There are four zones you can exist in, at work and in life: Genius, excellence, competence and incompetence. You want to think of these four zones as aspirational zones — meaning you might not yet be a genius, but you should aim to be a genius.”
And counterintuitively, this model recommends you remain squarely in your incompetence zone. “The stuff that you are naturally bad at and know that you dislike, you might as well stay incompetent,” she says. “I think you can get bitten by the things you’re good at, but aren’t energized by, so I like that there are different dimensions to these zones.”
Fill out this worksheet to discover yours. “What’s fun about this exercise is that you can either think about past jobs or your personal life today, or you can use it as an observational tool for a month,” says Mellinger.
Then go through your observations to pull out the values you lead with. Think about which problems you're best positioned to solve — the things you've noticed you already spend tons of time thinking about — and which customers and solutions make sense for you to immerse yourself with. “So for example, if you notice that you work best when you have a stable routine, maybe don't go after a customer base that involves extensive, frequent travel,” says Mellinger.
Immerse: Lead a one-day to one-week offsite with your team.
(Take ~1 day to 1 week)
Get together with your team — whether that’s just you and a co-founder or a handful of others to define your team core, aim and path.
Work together to fill out this reflection worksheet developed by Mellinger. “At the inception of your company, you and your teammates can take anywhere from one to three hours to go through and answer these questions. The idea is to codify who you are, what you want and how you’ll get there,” she says.
Mellinger also recommends adding in some incubation time after this immersion step. “It can be productive to answer some of these and maybe walk away for a day, or even a week, and then come back,” she says.
This can also be a moment to explore your fit with one another, as a team. You and your founding team can each fill out your zone or foundational reflection worksheets individually, then map how your zones overlap and where they might diverge. Discuss the benefits of these differences, and what else you might need to work around.
Integrate: Make your Fogg behavior change profile.