How Does Steli Efti Say Founders Fool Themselves About Customer Love?

Steli Efti, on The Startup Chat with Hiten Shah, says founders will visit customers and still fail to hear them. He describes a founder building a smartphone for everybody. Efti could not tell who it was for, or why it beat phones already for sale, and the team had little experience building one. They said the problem was not knowing their customer, then said research showed everybody loved the device equally. Efti concludes they talked with great passion, missed the clues, and decided the love was real. He does not think the case is rare. Founders lose the insight because they keep talking, aloud or in their own heads, and leave no quiet in which to listen.