Projects are where your customer discovery work lives. Each project represents a specific problem or market opportunity you’re investigating.
Creating a project
- Navigate to your workspace
- Click New Project
- Enter a project name
- Write a problem statement describing the market need you’re investigating
Problem statement quality
Founder Sherpa provides two layers of quality feedback for your problem statement:
- Real-time heuristics — As you type, a quality indicator shows whether your statement is weak, moderate, or strong. It checks for vague phrases, missing specifics (numbers, roles, time/money references), and whether you’re describing a problem rather than a solution.
- AI quality check — Click Check with AI for deeper analysis. The AI provides a quality rating, specific suggestions, and an optional rewrite that you can accept with one click.
A strong problem statement is specific, describes a real pain point, and identifies who experiences it. For example: “B2B SaaS product managers spend 10+ hours per week manually synthesizing customer interview notes, leading to delayed product decisions and missed insights.”
Project tearsheet
Every project has a tearsheet — a multi-tab view that organizes all your discovery work:
| Tab | What it shows |
|---|
| Overview | Project summary, Discovery Journey diagram, and quick stats |
| Personas | Customer personas being researched |
| Hypotheses | Testable assumptions organized by persona |
| Interviews | Evidence records, interviewees, and import history |
| Insights | AI-generated analysis and audit reports |
Overview tab
The Overview tab features the Discovery Journey diagram — a visual representation of the 5-step customer discovery cycle. The diagram highlights your current step based on project progress and provides quick action buttons for each step.
Editing a project
Open the project overflow menu to edit the project name or problem statement. Changes to the problem statement can be re-validated with the AI quality checker.
Exporting project data
From the project header, use the Export dropdown to download project data in various formats for sharing or backup. 
