When different customers show you identical workarounds, you've found universal pain worth solving
The strongest product-market fit signal isn't customers saying they have a problem—it's independently inventing the same messy solution without knowing others did too. When you find yourself across Stripe, Casper, Grammarly, and GoFundMe and they all show you a color-coded spreadsheet (different colors, different week starts, but identical structure), you've discovered a universal pain point hiding in plain sight. This is more valuable than survey data because it proves: (1) the pain is real enough they built something, (2) the solution is non-obvious enough existing tools don't solve it, (3) it generalizes across different scales and industries. Look for organic convergent solutions—they reveal the shape of the real problem better than any customer interview.
When to use
During early customer discovery when evaluating if a problem is real. When deciding if an internal tool could become a product. When customers start showing you their current processes. When you see patterns across multiple customer demos. When validating that Stripe/BigCo problem exists elsewhere.
Don't do this
Assuming one customer's unique solution represents a market. Building for edge cases without checking if others have the same pain. Stopping after finding pain at one company. Dismissing low-tech solutions (spreadsheets) as not representing real value. Not asking 'How do you do this today?' in every customer conversation.
1 Founder Who Did This
Every support leader showed the same messy color-coded spreadsheet for scheduling - universal pain visible across Stripe, Casper, Grammarly, and GoFundMe