0 customers, 120 interviews, and 1 brutal wake-up call: Gerald Vanderpuye’s lesson at Station F.💥
This is a story every entrepreneur should hear: from a £6 million deal and a promising tech career to zero customers and a humbling lesson shared at Station F for the Incubateur HEC Paris.
Gerald Vanderpuye isn’t your typical keynote speaker.
As he puts it: he’s not a teacher, he’s a founder of multiple startups.
Why did he step in front of our founders at the Incubateur HEC Paris?
To share a failure: a sharp, painful, but deeply useful failure.
🎯 “I talked about my idea. I didn’t ask about their problems.”
Gerald did what thousands of founders do: he built a product based on a problem he thought he understood. He interviewed 120 people. Sixty said: “Sounds great, come back when it’s ready.” So he did.
And when the product was ready?
None of them bought it.
Why? Because every conversation had been focused on his idea, not their reality.
“I was asking stuff like, ‘Would you buy this if I built it?’ It’s flattering. It feels great. And it’s completely useless.”
🧠 The Mom Test: your anti-BS compass
At the heart of Gerald’s talk is a method many founders know, but few truly apply:
The Mom Test, named after Rob Fitzpatrick’s cult book.
The concept?
Talk to customers as if they were your mom — that is, without ever trying to convince them your idea is good. Because yes, even your mom will lie to protect your feelings.
The 3 golden rules:
Don’t talk about your idea.
Ask about the past, not the future.
Talk less. Listen more.
🧪 You are not a salesperson. You are a scientist.
As Gerald puts it: every founder should act like a scientist — someone who’s here to find the truth, not validate a dream. And that truth lies in real customer behaviour, not flattering hypotheticals.
“Just because a problem exists doesn’t mean people care enough to solve it.”
Take his example: people trip on untied shoelaces all the time. Someone built unbreakable laces. Nobody bought them. Why? Because while the problem is real… no one cares enough to pay for the fix.
⚠️ The #1 startup killer? Indifference.
Gerald’s reminder is crystal clear: most startups don’t die because they can’t code — they die because no one gives a damn about the thing they’ve built.
Today, with no-code tools, cloud infra, and APIs, we can build almost anything. But that doesn’t mean anyone wants it.
🧭 Don’t talk to “people”. Talk to the
right
people.
Another key takeaway: not every customer is worth talking to. Focus on early adopters — the innovators who:
Already feel the pain,
Have tried solving it,
Are open to testing early, even incomplete products.
And above all: ask for introductions. Over and over again. Your first 10 customers won’t come from a form — they’ll come from a chain of warm intros.
⚙️ Bonus: How AI can help you learn faster
Gerald wrapped his session with some practical AI tips:
Use ChatGPT to identify your riskiest assumptions
Feed it your customer transcripts to extract insights
Build a dedicated GPT to centralize your customer learning
The goal? Make AI your strategic co-pilot in customer discovery.
🧩 What we’re taking away
Gerald didn’t just deliver a masterclass on The Mom Test — he held up a mirror to our own startup biases. He reminded us, with humour and honesty, that failure is often not about the product… but about the method.
“If even a seasoned sales pro like me can get it wrong, anyone can.”
Lesson learned.
📚 Further reading:
Connect with Gerald: LinkedIn