Customer Interviews That Drive a Pivot (No VC Needed)

Most founders treat customer interviews like a box to check. Then they wonder why the calls felt “helpful” but didn’t change anything.

Colleen Schnettler (co-founder of Hello Query, featured on TinySeed Tales) did something most bootstrapped teams avoid: she used interviews to change the business, not just polish a feature list. She ran roughly 20 customer conversations in a tight window, recognized the original market wasn’t pulling hard enough, and pivoted from a standalone internal reporting tool to an embedded reporting/export component that SaaS companies can drop into their app.

This matters a lot for the Small Business Social Media USA series because social is often your cheapest research lab. If you’re marketing without VC, you don’t have money to “learn later.” Your audience (and your next pivot) is already telling you what they’ll pay for—you just need a system that turns posts, replies, DMs, and calls into decisions.

Customer interviews work when they’re designed to force decisions

A customer interview is only useful if it helps you choose between paths. If it doesn’t narrow your options, you didn’t run an interview—you ran a friendly conversation.

In the episode, Colleen points out a problem most people don’t admit:

“You hear so much about how important it is to do customer interviews, but if those are not focused, then it can be hard for those interviews to lead you in the right direction.”

The interview goal isn’t “validation.” It’s pain measurement.

Bootstrapped founders can’t afford “interesting.” You need pain that already has budget. Colleen’s team learned that internal reporting requests (like a C-suite asking for a report once a week) weren’t painful enough. That’s a weak signal.

But a stronger signal showed up: their customers’ customers wanted data access—meaning SaaS vendors were constantly asked for custom exports, filters, and reports. That’s not a nice-to-have. It’s a recurring tax on support, engineering, and customer success.

Here’s the test I use:

• If a prospect says the problem is annoying, ask: “What did you do last time this happened?”
• If they say “nothing,” the problem isn’t real.
• If they say “we hacked something together / paid for a tool / built an internal script,” now you’re in business.

Ask the questions that expose money and frequency

Colleen mentions she can quickly tell, based on business size and current behavior, whether the pain is real. That’s the skill. You’re looking for:

1. Frequency: How often does this happen per week/month?
2. Current spend: What are they paying (tools, contractor time, internal labor)?
3. Workarounds: What did they build, duct-tape, or manually export?
4. Who screams loudest: Support? Sales? Customer Success? The customers themselves?

A simple scoring system helps you avoid “nice chats”:

• Frequency (1–5)
• Budget/spend (1–5)
• Urgency (1–5)
• Buyer proximity (1–5)

If you’re bootstrapped, don’t chase anything that doesn’t average at least 3.5/5.

A smart pivot is usually a positioning change, not a total reset

A lot of founders hear “pivot” and picture burning everything down. That’s expensive and demoralizing.

Hello Query’s shift is a good model for a no-VC pivot: same underlying competency (data access), new buyer and use case (embedded exports/reporting).

Rob Walling calls out the difference between a pivot and a restart, and Colleen highlights why this matters: they could reuse substantial parts of the existing codebase. That’s not just a technical win—it’s a runway win.

The hidden reason this pivot is financially attractive

Colleen says the quiet part out loud:

“We can upcharge them for this feature… now we’re closer to the money.”

Embedded reporting is often:

• Not core to the customer’s product roadmap (so they want to outsource it)
• Very real for retention (customers demand exports, scheduling, filtering)
• Easy to price as an add-on (because it maps to “advanced” needs)

For bootstrapped SaaS, that’s ideal. You’re selling something buyers already believe should cost extra.

Competition isn’t a red flag—it’s a map

Colleen previously saw “no competition” as a red flag. I agree.

Competition proves three useful things:

1. The problem exists.
2. Someone has convinced buyers to pay.
3. There are known categories and language you can borrow.

What matters is why you win anyway. In Hello Query’s case: targeting data-heavy SaaS products whose users are analysts and want direct access to data (exports, base queries, tenancy-safe setups) rather than pretty charts.

That’s a wedge. It’s also a marketing gift: your messaging becomes sharper.

Your social media can be the top of your interview funnel

Colleen found interviewees through her network, Twitter, and cold LinkedIn outreach. That’s a blueprint small businesses can actually run—especially in early 2026, when paid acquisition is still volatile and organic reach is uneven.

In the Small Business Social Media USA context, social isn’t just for brand awareness. It’s for customer development at scale.

A practical “social-first” interview pipeline (bootstrapped-friendly)

Here’s a workflow I’ve seen work repeatedly for founders marketing without VC:

1. Post a narrow problem statement (not your product).
   • Example: “If your customers keep asking for custom exports, how are you handling it today?”
2. Watch for high-intent replies (complaints, war stories, screenshots).
3. Move to DMs with one sentence:
   • “I’m researching how teams handle this—open to a 15-minute call? I’ll share what I’m seeing across companies.”
4. Track your responses like a funnel:
   • Post views → replies → DMs → calls booked → qualified pains

This keeps you from “posting consistently” without learning. And it turns social media marketing for small business into something measurable.

Where each platform fits (for US founders)

• LinkedIn: best for B2B buyer targeting and cold outreach.
• X (Twitter): best for warm network effects and fast iteration on positioning.
• YouTube/Short-form video: best when the problem needs demo/education (later stage).

If you can only do one: pick the platform where your buyers already talk shop.

How to run interviews without accidentally leading the witness

Colleen’s most useful insight is personal and very common: being enthusiastic can backfire.

“I was projecting my ‘oh my gosh, you love this,’ and they were like, ‘yeah, I guess so.’”

That’s deadly for bootstrapped teams because false positives waste months.

The “anti-hype” interviewing technique

A simple rule: act slightly harder to convince than you naturally want to be.

Tactics that keep people honest:

• Ask for stories, not opinions: “Tell me about the last time this happened.”
• Ask for numbers: “How many requests did you get last month?”
• Ask what they’ve tried: “What tools/scripts are you using now?”
• Use a disqualifying question: “If this stayed broken for 6 months, what would happen?”

If the answer is “not much,” you just saved yourself.

When it’s okay to show the product

Colleen is doing something I like: interviews that are almost sales, where she shows what exists and tests fit.

For embedded SaaS features (where customers will put you into production), seeing the interface and hearing objections early is useful—especially around:

• Security and tenancy boundaries
• Styling and UX constraints
• Reliability expectations
• Implementation time

Her stance is also strategically sound: a small team can’t serve everyone, so it’s reasonable to define what V1 looks like and sell to customers who can accept it.

Shipping “V1” when customers will run it in production

This is the part founders underestimate: some products can be scrappy; others must be stable on day one.

Embedded components fall into the “don’t embarrass your buyer” category. If a customer ships your tool inside their app and it breaks, you didn’t just lose a user—you damaged their trust with their users.

Colleen describes the tension well: ship early to capture momentum, but don’t erode trust.

The bootstrapped quality bar: narrow scope, high reliability

Here’s the approach I recommend for resource-constrained teams:

1. Reduce surface area (fewer features) so you can harden what remains.
2. Document the edges (what you won’t support in V1).
3. Pick a “founding customer” cohort (Colleen has ~3–4) and treat it like a paid pilot.
4. Instrument the basics: errors, latency, failed queries, export failures.
5. Write the rollback plan before you need it.

This is how you ship into production without a big QA department.

Pricing note: don’t hide the money conversation

Because Hello Query’s feature can be an upcharge for their customers, it fits naturally into value-based pricing.

A practical pricing angle for embedded reporting:

• Base plan includes basic exports
• “Advanced reporting / embedded analytics” add-on priced per account tier
• Implementation fee for larger customers (optional, but often smart)

Bootstrapped reality: pricing is part of validation. If nobody will discuss budget, you don’t have traction—you have feedback.

Next steps: turn your next week of social posts into interview fuel

If you’re building without VC, your job is to shorten the distance between “signal” and “decision.” Customer interviews do that—when you run them like experiments.

Start simple this week:

1. Write one post about a pain, not your product.
2. DM every thoughtful reply and book 5 calls.
3. Ask story-based questions and score the pain.
4. Choose one clear next step (double down, niche down, or pivot).

The founders who win without funding aren’t the ones with the most polished brand. They’re the ones who listen harder than everyone else—and then actually change their plan.

What would happen to your growth if your next 10 customer interviews forced one uncomfortable decision you’ve been avoiding?