The best discovery process I’ve ever seen

It came from Superhuman, and it’s superhuman.

Image by the author, who’s been on the left side waay too often, though without the Indiana Jones looks.

I think the single most important skill for founders is map making, let’s talk about that!

I talked to three founders last week. Same situation across the board: they’d raised $1M+ in seed funding, had paying customers who genuinely loved their product — not the “eh, I guess I’ll try it” kind, but the ones who actually get excited — and yet they were completely stuck.

No accelerated growth in months. All tracking toward missing their Series A window.

When I asked each of them, “What’s the one thing your product is missing that will make others kick down your door to buy it?” I got the same answer: “It’s hard to tell. Those early customers are special, they have this thing in common, but we’re having trouble scaling beyond this segment.”

Honestly, I should have had a better answer ready. Because there’s a discovery process I’ve been studying that could have saved them months of wandering around in circles.

How Superhuman actually did it

Most companies approach discovery like explorers hoping to stumble onto something valuable. Superhuman became systematic mappers — they systematically explored their way to Series A and owned every step of the process.