Build the Vision. Then Let the Market React.
What it means to be customer focused
Nikesh Arora runs Palo Alto Networks. $140 billion market cap. He joined knowing nothing about cybersecurity. By his own admission, he thought it was two words.
Last week he sat down with Brian Halligan on Sequoia’s podcast and said something that contradicts the lean startup gospel:
“So many founders get trapped in this idea that I should get customers as fast as I can, I should ask them what they want. The best founders should actually spend some time, build a product based on their own vision, show an end-to-end point of view, and solve a real problem.”
42% of startups fail because they build something nobody wants. The solution was supposed to be customer discovery. But Arora is saying customer discovery can be the problem.
He’s not wrong. He’s describing a specific failure mode. And understanding it clarifies what real customer focus looks like.
The Speeds and Feeds Trap
You’re building enterprise software. You set up advisory councils with CISOs from big banks. They give advice. Feels like progress.
The problem: big enterprises don’t want products. They want components.
“Large infrastructure people don’t want UI, they want speeds and feeds. Founders feel really happy. ‘Oh my God, I’ve built speeds and feeds. And look, this bank is using me because the bank’s got 15,000 engineers.’”
The bank will take your component and plug it into their systems. They’re not buying a product. They’re buying infrastructure.
“The problem is that’s not a product. That’s not a product an enterprise can deploy or work with or use effectively.”
Building speeds and feeds isn’t customer focus. It’s focusing on the customer in front of you instead of the customer you’re actually trying to serve.
What Customer Focus Actually Means
Steve Jobs said customers don’t know what they want until you show them. Jeff Bezos says he’s customer obsessed. Both built legendary companies. Contradiction?
No. Bezos put it this way:
“Customers are always dissatisfied. Even when they don’t know it, even when they think they’re happy, they actually do want a better way and they just don’t know yet what that should be.”
Amazon Prime wasn’t the answer to customer requests. It was the answer to latent frustration customers couldn’t articulate. “Unlimited free two-day shipping for an annual fee” wasn’t on anyone’s wish list.
Bezos didn’t ask customers what to build. He understood them so well he could build what they needed before they knew they needed it. That’s not ignoring customers. That’s the deepest form of customer focus.
Shallow customer focus: Ask what they want. Build that.
Deep customer focus: Understand them so thoroughly you can solve problems they haven’t articulated yet.
Shallow gets you components. Deep gets you products.
The Listening Paradox
Customers are experts at their own pain. They can tell you what’s broken, what’s slow, what frustrates them. That’s valuable signal.
Customers are not experts at solutions. They can’t envision what solves their problem, especially if it requires new behavior.
Arora walked into Palo Alto and found engineers working on 60 new features. He asked them to list the features on a whiteboard. They ran out at 37. Seven lines all said DNS.
He asked: can we replace a DNS security vendor if we ship this? Answer: no. We solve 60% of the problem.
“’60 percent is not good enough, bud. Like, what am I going to do with the other 40 percent?’”
A 60% solution feels customer-focused. You listened. You built. You shipped.
But it’s not. It leaves the customer with a problem still unsolved. Real customer focus means doing the hard work to deliver a complete solution.
Two Ways to Fail Your Customer
You can fail by ignoring them. Building in a vacuum. Assuming you know what they need. This kills 42% of startups.
You can fail by obeying them. Building exactly what they ask for. Shipping components instead of solutions. This is the sophisticated mistake.
Both failures come from the same root: not understanding your customer deeply enough.
If you truly understand your customer, you won’t ignore them. You’ll feel their pain too acutely to build something irrelevant.
If you truly understand your customer, you won’t just obey them. You’ll know the difference between what they’re asking for and what they actually need.
The Implication
The pressure to let customers design your product is enormous. “We need an API.” “We need more customization.” “We need this to plug into our existing workflows.”
Those requests might be valid. They might be speeds and feeds.
The question: are you building a complete solution that solves the customer’s problem? Or are you building components that force them to do the hard work themselves?
The winners won’t be the ones with the best technology. They’ll be the ones who focus so deeply on customers that they deliver complete solutions. Done work, not tools. Outcomes, not capabilities.
That requires knowing your customer better than they know themselves. It requires conviction to build complete solutions even when customers ask for components.
That’s real customer focus.
Build the vision. Then let the market react.