How to Identify Jobs-to-be-Done Without Customer Interviews

The textbook advice for JTBD is simple: “Interview your customers.”

But what if you don’t have customers yet? Or you can’t get them on the phone? Or you need insights before building something to test?

Good news: customer interviews are the gold standard, but they’re not the only way. Here are seven methods to identify jobs-to-be-done using publicly available data.

Why This Matters for Early-Stage Founders

You’re stuck in a catch-22:

• You need customer insights to build the right thing
• You need a product to get customers to interview
• VCs want evidence of customer discovery
• But you’re still at the “idea on a napkin” stage

These methods let you develop genuine JTBD hypotheses before you have a customer base to interview. You can validate (or invalidate) your assumptions, sharpen your positioning, and go into investor conversations with real evidence—all before writing a line of code.

Method 1: Competitor Review Mining

Where: G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, Product Hunt, App Store, Google Play

What you’re looking for: The story in reviews, not the rating.

How to Do It

1. Find 3-5 competitors in your space
2. Read their 2-star, 3-star, and 4-star reviews (extremes are less useful)
3. Look for reviews that explain why the person started using the product

What to Extract

Situation triggers:

“We had just switched to remote work and needed…” “After our team grew past 10 people…” “When we started getting more customer support tickets…”

Desired outcomes:

“I wanted to spend less time on…” “I needed a way to…” “I was looking for something that would help me…”

Switching moments:

“I came from [Previous Tool] because…” “We tried [Alternative] first but…”

Example

A review for Notion might say:

“We were using Google Docs for everything but it became a mess once we hit 20 employees. Couldn’t find anything. Spent hours in meetings just getting everyone on the same page. Notion at least gives us one place to look.”

Extracted job: “When my team grows past 20 people, I want a single organized workspace, so I can stop wasting time searching and syncing.”

Pro Tip

Look at reviews from 12-24 months ago. Early adopters often articulate the core job more clearly than mainstream users who just say “it’s good.”

Method 2: Reddit and Forum Deep Dives

Where: Reddit (r/startups, r/SaaS, r/productivity, niche subreddits), Indie Hackers, Hacker News, niche forums

What you’re looking for: People asking for help or recommendations

How to Do It

1. Search for “[Your category] recommendations” or “alternative to [Competitor]”
2. Find threads where people explain their situation before asking for help
3. Read the comments where people share their own experiences

What to Extract

Context and constraints:

“I’m a solo founder and don’t have budget for…” “Our company is enterprise so we need…” “I’m not technical, so something with a learning curve is out…”

Failed alternatives:

“I tried X but it was too complicated…” “Y worked until we needed to…”

Desired outcomes:

“Just looking for something that…” “Main thing I need is…”

Example

A Reddit post:

“Sick of Jira. Team of 5, we just want to track bugs and features without the ceremony. Tried Linear but it’s too minimal for us—we need custom fields. Anyone have suggestions?”

Extracted job: “When my small team needs to track work but hates ceremony, I want a simple tool with enough flexibility, so we can stay organized without fighting our tools.”

Pro Tip

The replies are often more valuable than the original post. People share their switching stories in the comments.

Method 3: Amazon Book Reviews

Where: Amazon reviews for books in your problem space

What you’re looking for: People explaining why they bought the book and whether it solved their problem

How to Do It

1. Find the top 3-5 books in your problem area
2. Read the 3-star reviews (they contain the most balanced perspective)
3. Look for reviews that explain the reader’s situation

What to Extract

Professional context:

“As a product manager at a startup…” “I’m transitioning from engineering to product…”

What they were trying to learn/solve:

“I bought this hoping to learn how to…” “I needed a framework for…”

What worked and didn’t:

“The section on X was exactly what I needed…” “Didn’t go deep enough on Y…”

Example

A review for a product management book:

“I’m a first-time PM at a seed-stage startup. Bought this hoping to learn how to prioritize when everything feels urgent. The RICE framework section was helpful but I wish there was more on how to push back on stakeholders.”

Extracted job: “When I’m a new PM and everything feels urgent, I want a framework for prioritizing and communicating decisions, so I can push back on stakeholders with confidence.”

Method 4: Support Ticket and Help Doc Analysis

Where: Competitor help centers, community forums, Intercom-style public knowledge bases

What you’re looking for: What problems people are trying to solve, not just feature questions

How to Do It

1. Visit competitor knowledge bases
2. Look at “most viewed” or “popular” articles
3. Search for phrases like “how do I…” or “can I…”
4. Read community forum threads where support is asked

What to Extract

Frequent pain points: What questions get asked repeatedly? These reveal jobs the product is failing at.

Workarounds: When people ask “how do I do X?” and the answer is a complex workaround, that’s an unmet job.

Integration questions: “How do I connect X to Y?” reveals the job of making tools work together.

Example

A popular help article:

“How to export your data to use in Excel”

Plus community threads asking for better export options.

Extracted job: “When I need to analyze my data outside the app, I want easy export options, so I can use my preferred tools without manual work.”

Method 5: Quora and Stack Overflow Questions

Where: Quora, Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange sites

What you’re looking for: Questions that reveal what people are trying to accomplish

How to Do It

1. Search for questions in your problem space
2. Look at highly-upvoted questions (many people have this problem)
3. Read the question context, not just the answer

What to Extract

Specific scenarios:

“I’m trying to [specific task] because [reason]…”

Constraints:

“I can’t use [solution] because…” “I need something that works with…”

Alternatives tried:

“I’ve tried [A], [B], and [C], but none of them…”

Pro Tip

Questions with many upvotes but no accepted answer often represent jobs that existing tools don’t solve well.

Method 6: Sales and Demo Call Recordings

Where: Gong, Chorus, or call recordings (if you have access); alternatively, competitor webinars and demos

What you’re looking for: How prospects describe their situation and what questions they ask

If you’re pre-product, you probably don’t have these. But you can:

• Watch competitor demo videos on YouTube
• Listen to podcast interviews with your target customer
• Attend competitor webinars and note the Q&A

What to Extract

How prospects describe their situation: The words they use to describe their problem are the words you should use in marketing.

Questions they ask: Questions reveal what they’re anxious about and what jobs they need to accomplish.

Objections: What makes them hesitate? These are risks they perceive in the job-to-be-done.

Method 7: Your Own Experience

Where: Your memory, your network

If you’re building in a space you’ve worked in, you have firsthand experience with the job.

How to Do It

1. Think back to a specific moment when you experienced the problem
2. Write the story: What triggered the need? What did you try? What worked or didn’t?
3. Talk to 3-5 people in your network who’ve had similar experiences

What to Extract

Your own job statement: “When I was [situation], I wanted to [motivation], so I could [outcome].”

Validation or invalidation: Do others share your job, or was it unique to you?

Caution

Your experience is a hypothesis, not proof. Use the other methods to validate that others share your job.

Combining Methods: A Practical Approach

Here’s a lightweight process that takes about 4-8 hours:

Hour 1-2: Competitor reviews

• Read 50 reviews across 3 competitors
• Extract 10-15 job-related quotes

Hour 3-4: Reddit/forum mining

• Find 10 relevant threads
• Extract context, constraints, and desired outcomes

Hour 5-6: Help doc and support analysis

• Review 2-3 competitor help centers
• Identify top pain points and workarounds

Hour 7-8: Synthesis

• Group similar quotes together
• Draft 3-5 candidate job statements
• Rank by frequency (how often it appeared)

From Research to Hypotheses

You now have job hypotheses, not validated jobs. They’re directional, not definitive.

Use them to:

• Sharpen your landing page messaging
• Prioritize which features to build first
• Guide conversations with early users
• Create a discussion guide for real JTBD interviews when you do have customers

Don’t use them to:

• Make irreversible product decisions
• Skip customer interviews entirely once you have users
• Assume you’ve found the right job

What Comes Next

This research gives you a head start. But nothing replaces talking to actual customers once you have them.

Use your secondary research to:

1. Build a hypothesis about the core job
2. Create a minimal solution that addresses it
3. Get it in front of real users
4. Conduct proper JTBD interviews to validate or refine

The goal isn’t to skip customer conversations. It’s to have better conversations when you get there.

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Next steps:

• Review the complete JTBD framework
• When you’re ready, learn how to run JTBD interviews
• Build job statements with our JTBD Statement Builder