What Startups Got Right—By Listening to Their Users Early
- uccwebsite2021
- Jul 17
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 18
A few months ago at T-Hub, I met a visibly overwhelmed founder—fresh out of a pitch, juggling product deadlines, investor feedback, and a looming launch. “I just wish someone could tell me what my users actually want.”, he said, half-laughing, half-defeated.
It’s a line I’ve heard countless times. In the early rush of building, it's tempting to rely on instincts, investor advice, or what competitors are doing. But again and again, we’ve seen this: founders who talk to users early don’t just build faster—they build right.
At UCC, we’ve had the chance to walk alongside several early-stage start-ups which are still in idea mode, or gearing up to build. Whether it’s identifying the real problem, decoding where the opportunity lies, what their users value or evaluating product concepts, user research has played a pivotal role in shaping those journeys. It’s not just helpful—it’s often the difference between building with confidence and building in the dark.
Here are a few stories from our work that might just convince you to bring your users into the room a little earlier.
Case Study 1: Understanding Financial Behaviours and Aspirations of India’s Middle Class: A Focus on Education Savings
Challenge: A fintech start-up aimed at helping families save for their children’s education needed clarity on who their target users were and what would truly drive them to adopt the product.
Our Approach: We combined secondary research with in-depth interviews across tier 1 and 2 cities in Hindi, English, and Telugu. The secondary research aimed to map the existing savings and investment landscape, including available financial products and existing knowledge around parental saving behaviours for children's education. In-depth interviews were conducted to explore the saving and gifting mindsets, underlying motivations and aspirations, spousal roles in financial decision-making, and key barriers faced by middle-income families when saving for their child’s education.
Impact: The research revealed nuanced culturally and socially influenced saving and money-gifting behaviours, and notions around the importance of education. Edukitti used these insights to shape product strategy and features, define pricing models, and sharpen their marketing strategy, all aligned with the aspirations and preferences of their real users. The early-stage product and feature idea evolved into a user-aligned blueprint.
Case Study 2: When Assumptions Didn’t Match Reality — Forcing a Critical Rethink
Challenge: An experienced professional, stepping into the role of a first-time founder, envisioned an all-in-one social media management tool. Confident in his understanding of the target user segment, he assumed he knew their needs and behaviours well. He approached us to run a ‘simple’ study, aimed at answering two questions: Which features matter most? And what would users be willing to pay for them?
Our Approach: Through interviews with digital marketers and social media managers across different sizes of organisations, set-ups and geographies, we mapped their team structure, current workflows, explored tool usage, current needs & challenges and tested the client's product concept.
Impact: We discovered a critical misalignment: the users he assumed were far from the real potential users, and their problems and needs did not align with what the product was trying to solve. This insight led to a strategic pivot, which included redefining the primary user, rethinking flows and features, and adjusting pricing models. The founder summed it up best in a note to us:
"Your insights not only saved me money but also very precious years of my life... I understood how wrong my hypothesis was about the extent of the need and who my primary user would be." — Founder
Case Study 3:Building a Zero-to-One Product with User Research
Challenge: Still in the early idea stage, a start-up wanted to build a first-of-its-kind, innovative product that is an aggregator for on-demand tech support. They wanted to understand what the competitive landscape looked like? Who were the potential user segments? And were users even seeking this?
Our Approach: To assess the opportunity landscape, we combined secondary research with in-depth interviews across India, mapping user behaviours, unmet needs, and whitespace in the current market.
Impact: The research surfaced key insights suggesting that while fragmented, indirect solutions existed (like calling a friend or local technician), there was a clear gap for a personalised, trustworthy, and easy-to-access tech support experience, especially for non-tech-savvy users and small households.
We helped the startup:
Identify high-potential user segments who showed both need and intent
Uncover key product attributes that build user trust and confidence
Articulate a clear positioning that differentiates them from DIY help or informal sources
Armed with this clarity, the team moved ahead confidently to design and launch their beta app, with a roadmap grounded in real user needs and market opportunities, minimising guesswork and maximising relevance from day one.
“Your user-first approach played a key role in shaping the product and making this milestone (launch of the app) possible.” — Rajesh, Founder of Geek-on-Demand
Case Study 4: Beyond Existing Expertise: A Research-Led Approach to New Growth
Challenge: A well-established organisation with deep expertise in designing complex human diagnostic machines set its sights on entering the veterinary diagnostics space. However, this move required more than a surface-level market assessment. The team needed a comprehensive understanding of on-ground workflows, buyer persona & behaviour, and the technology readiness of diverse stakeholders in this new domain.
Our Approach: We adopted a multi-layered research strategy, blending secondary market intelligence with in-depth stakeholder interviews and contextual inquiries across veterinary clinics, diagnostic labs, and academic institutions. This approach enabled us to map the diagnostic journey end-to-end, identifying current practices, latent needs, workflow inefficiencies, and decision-making patterns. We also evaluated openness to technology, pricing expectations, and adoption triggers to provide a 360° view of the market landscape.
Impact: The research uncovered not just gaps, but clear pathways for innovation, pinpointing unmet needs and priority opportunity areas across the ecosystem. It also surfaced systemic barriers and behavioural nuances that could hinder adoption. These insights now serve as critical inputs to product strategy, design decisions, and go-to-market planning—empowering the client to make informed investments and enter the veterinary diagnostics space with empathy, clarity, confidence, and strategic alignment.
Case Study 5: Mad Scientists: Making User Research a Part of the Company Culture
Sometimes, the most meaningful shift doesn’t happen through direct research but through a mindset change.
Mad Scientists, a young tech company, attended a workshop conducted by our founder, Shipra Bhutada, at T-Hub. That single exposure convinced them of the power of user research. Since then, they’ve embedded it deeply into their culture, allocating resources to regularly engage with users and track their evolving needs.
The result? A small start-up with a now-growing global footprint and a proud identity as a user-first organisation. Not only do they make user-informed decisions, but they also actively advocate for user research in the start-up community.
“I tell all the new founders that it is the founder's job to connect with users and do user research so that he or she can make decisions rooted in user understanding” — Bhanu Mergoju, Founder of Mad Scientist
Lessons for Start-Up Founders
Each of these stories illustrates a unique challenge, but the underlying takeaway is universal: guesswork is expensive, user insight is invaluable.
Why This Matters for Investors
Startups that invest in early user research de-risk product bets, iterate faster, and reach product-market fit with higher confidence. We've seen it repeatedly: real user insight leads to better capital efficiency and stronger GTM alignment.
In Conclusion: Build With, Not Just For, Your Users
Start-ups are born out of vision and ambition. But they succeed when that vision is shaped by the real lives, needs, and behaviours of users. At UCC, we believe that research is not a detour; it’s the path. It saves time, prevents costly mistakes, and builds conviction.
Whether you’re refining an idea, launching your MVP, or scaling your product, the earlier you bring your users into the conversation, the more resilient and relevant your start-up will be.
Your users aren’t just testers at the end—they’re your co-builders from day one. Let their voices shape your product, and you’ll uncover insights no pitch deck ever could.
Co-authored by Mayank Loonker and the UCC team
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