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The Discovery Journey is the core methodology in Founder Sherpa. It’s a repeatable 5-step cycle displayed as an interactive diagram on every project’s Overview tab.

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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 diagram works

The Discovery Journey diagram on the Overview tab:
  • Highlights the current step based on your project’s progress (e.g., if you have personas but no hypotheses, step 2 is highlighted)
  • Shows completion indicators for steps you’ve finished
  • Provides quick action buttons — click any step to jump to its action (e.g., clicking “Interview” opens the interview action modal)
On desktop, the diagram renders as a pentagon ring layout. On mobile, it switches to a vertical stepper for easier navigation.

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The iterative cycle

Customer discovery is not linear. After completing a round of interviews (steps 3–4), you return to steps 1–2 to:
  • Refine persona definitions based on what you learned
  • Add new hypotheses that emerged from interviews
  • Invalidate hypotheses that evidence contradicts
  • Identify gaps that need more research
Each cycle through the journey sharpens your understanding of the customer problem.