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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.founder-sherpa.com/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

The Discovery Journey is the core methodology in Founder Sherpa. It’s a repeatable 5-step cycle displayed as an interactive checklist on every project’s Overview tab, guiding you through each phase with clear progress tracking and actionable next steps.

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The five steps

1

Define Personas

Identify the customer segments you want to research. Each persona represents a type of person you believe experiences the problem you’re investigating.Actions: Create personas with a name, role type, and optional descriptors (description, demographics, goals).

Learn more about Personas

2

Define Hypotheses

For each persona, formulate testable hypotheses — assumptions you want to validate through interviews. These might be about pain points, behaviors, willingness to pay, or workflow patterns.Actions: Add hypotheses to specific personas. Use the AI quality checker to strengthen your hypothesis statements.

Learn more about Hypotheses

3

Find People

Identify real people who match your personas and are willing to be interviewed. Use the AI suggestions to help brainstorm where to find interviewees.Actions: Build your interviewee list and prepare for outreach.
4

Interview

Conduct customer interviews and record what you learn. This step offers three paths:
  • Prepare — Create an interview guide with selected hypotheses and curated questions
  • Record — Add interview evidence directly, linking it to hypotheses and questions
  • Upload — Import a transcript and let AI extract structured evidence

Learn more about Interviews

5

Refine & Repeat

Analyze your accumulated evidence to identify patterns, validate or invalidate hypotheses, and decide what to investigate next.Actions: Run batch analysis across all evidence, review AI-generated insights, and iterate on your personas and hypotheses based on what you’ve learned.

Learn more about AI Features

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How the checklist works

The Discovery Journey appears as an interactive checklist on every project’s Overview tab. It works like a setup guide, showing you exactly where you are and what to do next.
  • Progress bar — a thin bar at the top shows how many of the 5 steps you’ve completed (e.g., “3 of 5 steps”)
  • Accordion cards — each step is a collapsible card. The current step auto-expands with a description, sub-tasks, and action buttons. You can expand any step to review or preview it.
  • Sub-tasks — steps show granular progress. For example, “Define Hypotheses” lists each persona with its hypothesis count, so you can see which personas still need attention.
  • Action buttons — each step has a primary call-to-action (e.g., “Add Persona”, “Record Interview”) that opens the relevant modal or navigates to the right page.

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The iterative cycle

Customer discovery is not linear. After completing all 5 steps, the checklist enters cycle mode:
  • A “Cycle 2” badge appears, signaling you’re in a new iteration
  • Steps 1–4 remain complete with updated count badges
  • Step 5 (“Refine & Repeat”) shows a nudge when new interviews have been recorded since your last AI analysis — prompting you to re-validate your hypotheses
Each cycle through the journey sharpens your understanding of the customer problem. The checklist keeps you oriented without resetting your progress.