The SaaS problem nobody talks about: your first users may be teaching you the wrong lessons

Early-stage founders love talking to users.

And they should.

But there is a trap:

Your first 20 customers are not always your market.

They are often your biggest fans, your most patient users, or people who tolerate problems because they believe in you.

The dangerous question is:

"What features do these users want?"

The better question:

"What problem made them willing to tolerate our imperfect product?"

Those are very different answers.

A founder can spend six months building requests from early users and accidentally create a product optimized for people who already love them — not the next 1,000 customers.

The best customer feedback I've seen usually comes from studying:

what users tried before your product
what workaround they hate giving up
what moment almost made them leave
what made them finally decide to pay

Feature requests tell you what people want.

Behavior tells you what they value.

Early users are not your roadmap.

They are clues.

Curious how other founders separate useful customer signals from noise?