Why customer conversations matter more than perfect business plans

The plan felt like progress

Early on, it's easy to mistake a well-formatted business plan for momentum. It has numbers, a market size, a roadmap. It feels finished. But almost every assumption in it is untested.

Building Ta'seer, a platform for brands and creators, taught me that the most useful information didn't come from the plan. It came from conversations — and many of them contradicted what I'd written down.

What conversations reveal

A conversation tells you how someone describes their problem in their own words, what they're already doing about it, and whether they'd actually change their behaviour for a solution.

That last part matters most. Interest is cheap. Changed behaviour is the signal.

A simple habit

Before building the next feature or writing the next slide, ask: who have I spoken to this week who would use this? If the answer is nobody, that's the next task.