Being close to a problem can make you dangerously confident about the buyer. Ayse Guvencer calls this the domain expert trap: lived pain can narrow how you see the market.
Ayse moved from agency work and roles at Google and Sage into advising early-stage companies, where buyer research kept exposing assumptions teams had treated as facts.
Those assumptions can shape the product and sales story before anyone checks them. Breaking them early can save months of work and money later.
What we cover
1ļøā£ Early enthusiasm can distort the roadmap
Early adopters will tolerate rough edges and ask for more. Ayse explains why that enthusiasm is useful evidence and where wider market testing still needs to happen.
2ļøā£ Use expertise to start the investigation
Solving the problem yourself gives you a useful starting point. Buyer conversations show whether other people see the same problem and feel the same urgency.
3ļøā£ Job titles don't define buyers
Two people with the same title can be in completely different buying situations. Ayse looks for the trigger and who else shapes the purchase.
4ļøā£ Category creation comes with an education bill
Creating a category means teaching buyers before you can sell them anything. For an early company, working inside an existing market can be far cheaper.
5ļøā£ Churned customers expose what broke
Current customers show what is working. People who left can reveal where expectations failed and which assumptions are still shaping the product.
Chapters
00:00 The buyer in your head
08:24 The domain expert trap
15:27 When the market surprises you
24:02 Category creation gets expensive
30:27 The 10-customer reality check
Find Ayse on LinkedIn, ELVT Advisory and Founderās Stack Trace
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