Building Companies Around Real Customer Needs

​Too many founders are building from assumptions. They think they understand the customer, build what they believe the market wants, add technology, and then struggle to turn traction into repeatable growth. The challenge, sometimes, is the problem being solved, how deeply the customer is understood, how risk is assessed, how the product reaches the market, or whether the business is being built for the reality of its customers. And as founders enter new markets and try to scale, those assumptions can become even more expensive.

​In this conversation, Rob Alhadeff, Founder & CEO of Jackfruit Finance, will unpack what it really takes to move from identifying a problem to building a company that can scale around it. Drawing from his experience in finance, lending, technology, and building for underserved markets across Africa, we'll explore how founders can develop stronger founder-market fit, discover what customers actually need, use AI and data to make better decisions, manage risk, design products around real behavior, build effective distribution, and turn deep customer understanding into a defensible business.

​You'll leave with a clearer way to think about what to build, who to build for, and how to scale it. We'll explore how to distinguish a real customer problem from an interesting idea, turn customer insight into better product decisions, use AI as an intelligence layer rather than simply an automation tool, approach emerging markets without importing assumptions that don't fit, build distribution that compounds, and create the data, relationships, systems, and insight that can become genuine competitive moats. Most importantly, you'll have practical ideas you can apply to your own journey from traction toward $1M ARR and beyond.