A Pakistani B2B startup can build an impressive demonstration before it knows who will buy the product. Customer discovery is the work of reducing that uncertainty: learning how a business handles a problem today, who feels its cost and what would make a change worth the effort. For a founder planning international growth, this should happen before a long expansion plan becomes a fixed engineering commitment.
USEFP’s Innovation Hive page lists a commercialisation and go-to-market workshop for 19–21 October 2026, covering enterprise sales and B2B marketing among other subjects. The page still displays a forthcoming-registration message. It establishes the advertised programme, not attendance, completed outcomes or current availability. The guide below is my own analysis, not a workshop summary. Source: USEFP.
What customer discovery should change
The useful output is a better decision about what to build, whom to approach or which assumption to abandon. A folder of positive interview comments is insufficient if it never changes the plan. I would begin by writing one claim that could be wrong: a particular type of business has a recurring problem, a specific employee owns it and the existing workaround is costly enough to reconsider.
There is a broader commercialisation precedent for testing ideas outside the laboratory. The National Science Foundation describes I-Corps as experiential training that helps researchers move towards commercialisation. That is a methodological reference here, not a claim that Pakistani teams are eligible for that programme or connected to it. Source: NSF I-Corps.
Choose interviewees by responsibility
“Small businesses abroad” is too broad to guide a useful first interview. Try a tighter description: the person who resolves missing delivery documents at a distributor with several branches. This identifies a workflow and a responsibility without assuming the solution. The company size, transaction pattern and current tools should be recorded as hypotheses, rather than treated as settled facts about an entire market.
Speak to people who perform the work as well as those who approve spending. The operator may describe daily friction while a manager explains how priorities are set. A friendly adviser may help identify introductions, but their opinion should not be counted as equivalent to a potential buyer’s direct experience. Keep those categories separate in your notes, especially when early conversations come through personal relationships.
Ask about the last real occurrence
I would ask the interviewee to describe the last time the problem occurred. What triggered it? Which tools were opened? Who became involved? How did they know the issue was resolved? These questions invite a concrete account. Asking whether someone would like an AI assistant instead invites a reaction to your proposed product, which may reveal little about the importance of the underlying work.
Request examples only when the person is comfortable sharing them and the material can be handled appropriately. A blank template or an anonymised process sketch may be enough. Do not make access to confidential customer records a condition for an exploratory conversation. The founder’s immediate job is to understand the sequence, the decision points and the consequences, rather than collect as much data as possible.
Keep an evidence ledger with contradictions
A simple interview record can contain the role, company profile, recent example, current workaround, unresolved question and next step. Separate the interviewee’s account from your interpretation. If someone says a process is annoying, that does not automatically mean it has budget priority. If they cannot recall a recent occurrence, record that too. An inconvenient answer may be the most useful part of the conversation.
After a small batch of interviews, compare patterns within the same customer category before combining everything. Two companies may use the same words for different jobs. One might need faster preparation; another might need a more reliable approval trail. If those needs require different products, do not disguise the difference in a broad claim about market demand. Narrowing the customer profile is a legitimate result.
Test international relevance without assuming it
For a team in Pakistan, I would distinguish familiarity with a problem from evidence that an international buyer experiences it in the same way. A domestic reference can help explain the product, but the next buyer may have different tools, purchasing routines or support requirements. Start with a comparable customer profile and explicitly ask where the existing workflow differs. Let the evidence determine the expansion sequence.
Remote interviews can be organised around a short agenda and a process sketch rather than a lengthy product presentation. Send a concise explanation of what you want to learn, avoid implying an established relationship and offer a clear follow-up. Keep the initial request small. The objective is a credible conversation with the right person, not a large mailing list that looks like a sales pipeline.
Turn an interview into a bounded experiment
When a problem appears concrete, propose the smallest next step that tests your remaining uncertainty. That might be reviewing a prototype with the operator, agreeing a sample workflow or asking the budget owner how a purchase would be assessed. Define what a useful result looks like before the experiment starts. A meeting accepted out of politeness should not be reported as a committed pilot.
For example, imagine a product that helps a distributor find incomplete delivery records. An early test could use a permitted sample and ask whether the operator can identify the correct next action more reliably. It need not connect to every system or promise autonomous decisions. The example is illustrative; it describes a possible experiment, not a Pakistani startup’s disclosed performance or a validated market opportunity.
Bring decisions, not only interviews, to investors
My investor question would be what the team learned that changed its behaviour. Perhaps a segment was dropped, the buyer turned out to be different from the daily user, or a requested feature was less important than reliable onboarding. Show the evidence and the decision together. There is no universal interview count that establishes product-market fit, and I would not replace customer judgement with a numerical target.
For Pakistani founders building B2B products for international customers, disciplined discovery can make the next funding conversation more concrete. Read the related guide to SaaS pricing and software partner selection. If you have a clear problem, a product and early customer evidence, share your progress. My early-stage investment focus is B2B and fintech; wider editorial coverage does not change that thesis.