Seven Secrets to New Business Success — Lessons From Ryuta Hamamoto | TIMEWELL

[See Part 1 here]

Part 1 covered Ryuta Hamamoto's encounters with the three key figures who drew him into new business development, and the mindset required to make new ventures succeed. Part 2 distills seven practical secrets — concrete methods for launching a new business, deepening customer understanding, and using AI effectively.

Who is the customer?
Segmenting your customers
How to uncover customer problems
Structuring customer problems
Using generative AI
Sharpening your questioning and field observation skills
Pricing principles — Final message from the lecture

1. Who Is the Customer?

The customer who pays us is the party we must engage with first and foremost. In platform businesses especially, you need to solve challenges on both the supply side and the demand side — but you should prioritize the customers who have a problem they're willing to pay to solve.

Consider the example of building a platform for large-company employees who want to take on side work. Many people instinctively think of those employees as the customer. But the party you actually need to engage with is the company side that receives side-working talent — because the company is the one paying for the platform. Without solving the company's problems, the business doesn't work. By prioritizing the needs of the party writing the check, you raise the value of your service and grow the business.

That said, the needs of the unpaying side — in this case, the employees who want side work — also matter. They simply come second in priority. The question I'd ask each of you: in your own business, who is the customer who actually pays? If you're thinking about a platform business, revisit this question directly. Identifying your true customer and focusing your efforts on solving their problems is the key to building a successful venture.

2. Segmenting Your Customers

Cutting customer segments finely is critical. Broad segmentations like "large-company employees in their early 20s to early 30s" lack the resolution you need. Ideally, you should segment customers precisely enough that you could actually go meet them. Starting narrow and gradually expanding the market is the smarter strategy.

You might worry that fine segmentation shrinks your addressable market. In practice, that's fine. Start from a narrowly defined initial market and expand the segment step by step. Refining segments is also essential for identifying where you can break in most effectively and where you can expand most naturally.

There are a few approaches to this. A left-brain approach involves cutting segments along axes like demographics, problems, and behaviors. A right-brain approach means defining a persona, running interviews, and refining the persona iteratively. Whichever approach you take, the goal is the same: narrow the customer segment, sharpen the persona, and clarify who to go after first. A clear picture of your target market accelerates everything. Start by making your customer segmentation as precise as possible.

3. How to Uncover Customer Problems

Getting customer problems right is central to building a successful business. But drawing out a customer's real problem isn't easy. Ninety-five percent of people can't articulate their true feelings. Customers will sometimes say things in an interview that aren't quite accurate. Ask someone "is your refrigerator clean?" and even the person with the messy fridge will say "well, it's a little messy, I guess."

A user who gets frustrated with a vacuum cord that keeps tangling might answer "there's nothing in particular I'm struggling with." They've unconsciously adapted to the inconvenience — it's become the new normal. That's why an interviewer needs to sharpen their observation skills and read past the words to the real meaning. Understanding the real problem requires the insight to pick up on facial expressions, body language, and the nuance behind what's said.

Interviews alone aren't enough. Going to where customers actually are and observing their behavior is equally important. Problems that don't surface in interviews often become visible in the field. Another approach: become the customer yourself. Actually use the service, find what's frustrating or broken. That's how you discover problems from the customer's perspective.

Uncovering customer problems is a continuous cycle of hypothesis and validation. Form a hypothesis from interviews and observation, then go back to the customer to test it. That patient, iterative work is what leads to genuine problem-solving. It takes time. But by listening sincerely to customers, getting into the field, and experiencing things firsthand, you will eventually see the true nature of the problem. From that comes a solution that creates real value — I'm certain of it.

4. Structuring Customer Problems

To truly understand customer problems, you have to structure them. Structuring a problem means stepping back to see the whole picture and identifying its essence. Start by exploring the background of the problem: why did it arise, and what is its root cause? Then identify the specific situations where the problem occurs. Map it along a time axis — at which points does the problem appear most frequently? The most critical problems tend to be concentrated there.

From there, trace the mechanism by which the problem arises. Look carefully for psychological barriers and structural hurdles. A digital service for elderly users, for example: anxiety about operating the interface might be a psychological barrier. Small buttons that are physically difficult to press would be a structural hurdle.

Working through those psychological and structural barriers one by one reveals the full shape of the problem. Structuring problems is difficult to do alone. It takes a team pooling its perspectives and looking at the problem from multiple angles. And listening sincerely to people in the field is always essential.

A structured problem becomes a guide to the solution. A vague problem statement can't produce an accurate solution. Only by identifying the core of the problem and making its structure visible can you find the path to a solution that creates genuine value. It's not easy work — it takes time. But that's exactly where the seeds of innovation sleep. Engaging patiently with the problem and cutting into its structure — that's the royal road to new business success, in my view.

5. Using Generative AI

Generative AI is a powerful ally in new business development. It's especially well suited to the hypothesis validation stage. You can use generative AI across a range of activities: testing business hypotheses, defining personas, analyzing competitors, and developing problem hypotheses. Generating multiple versions of a hypothesis on your own is exhausting — generative AI makes it possible to produce a wide variety of ideas efficiently.

Using tools like ChatGPT and Claude dramatically expands the range of your thinking. It becomes possible to approach ideas flexibly, without being locked into fixed assumptions. That said, generative AI is a tool. Don't take what it produces at face value — digest it with your own thinking and be selective. Using generative AI well requires some experience and knowledge.

Don't over-rely on it either. It's valuable as support for generating ideas, but the final decisions must be made by humans. Use AI suggestions as reference, and make directional decisions with your own judgment.

Generative AI holds the potential to transform new business development. But using it well demands the creativity and judgment of the person wielding it. Drawing on AI's capabilities while thinking things through yourself — that balance is, I believe, what new business development now requires. I encourage everyone to make generative AI an ally and use it to expand the possibilities of their ventures.

6. Sharpening Your Questioning and Field Observation Skills

Interviews are a critical tool for understanding customer problems. But depending on how you ask, the real problem may never emerge.

Five principles for asking good questions:

Focus on actions happening now, not hypothetical future behavior
Ask concrete questions, not abstract ones
Ask about the process, not the outcome
Ask about problems, not solutions
Ask questions about time and place

Especially effective are time-and-place questions like "where were you at that moment?" or "what were you working on just before that?" — they reliably draw out specific, concrete behavior.

Sample questions to use:

Walk me through exactly how you currently do [X] — what does the full process look like?
How long have you been doing [X] this way?
Are there any problems, frustrations, inefficiencies, or annoyances when you do [X]?
Do you have your own personal approach to [X]?
Who else is involved in [X]?
Why does [X] cause you pain or frustration?
How are you currently handling [X] to get it done?
Can you walk me through the specific steps of that workaround?
How much time and cost does this take, and what part is most inconvenient?

Through these questions, you can get closer to the customer's behavioral patterns and the essence of their problems. But some problems don't surface in interviews — which is where field observation becomes important.

Three signals to look for during field observation:

They ask lots of questions and show genuine passion about solving the problem
They lean in and engage with energy when talking about it (visible in body language)
They demonstrate a willingness to pay to solve the problem

Field observation reveals what customers actually need — and what they're expecting from a service. Combining questions and observation enables a deeper understanding of customers. Don't be misled by surface-level answers: cutting through to the real problem is the first step toward new business success.

7. Pricing Principles

Getting pricing right is essential to building a successful business. Pricing is a key factor that determines the value of a service — and it has a significant impact on the relationship with customers.

The first thing to understand: pricing is the only process in product development that is inherently at odds with the customer. Customers naturally want to pay less. The cheaper, the better — from their perspective. But pursuing cheapness at the expense of the service's value defeats the purpose. As a business, you need to earn a return commensurate with the value you deliver.

That's why the principle is to set the highest price that's theoretically justifiable for your offering. When in doubt, go higher. Lowering prices is always possible; raising them is very hard. Reaching for a lower price usually signals either a lack of confidence in your own product or insufficient value being delivered. Using discounts to acquire customers may work in the short run. But if you're thinking about building a long-term relationship, the right approach is to set an appropriate price and communicate its value clearly.

Don't overlook the importance of per-unit price. A lower price per unit means you need more customers — which drives up customer acquisition costs and erodes business efficiency. Acquiring even one customer is not easy. That's exactly why treating each customer with care and building lasting relationships matters so much. And that's why appropriate pricing is indispensable.

Pricing is the moment that tests your resolve as a business operator. It takes confidence in your own service — and the courage to value it fairly. Resist the easy path of price cuts. Keep delivering genuine value to customers. That, I am convinced, is the road to sustainable business growth.

— Final Message From the Lecture

I hope this has been useful. The path of new business creation is anything but flat. There will be setbacks and failures. But that's exactly where the seeds of innovation sleep. Creating new value and changing the world — that is the entrepreneur's privilege and mission.

In everything: action is what counts. Don't fear failure. Take the first step. That's where it all begins.

I genuinely wish each of you success in your new venture.

Writer: Yumiko Honma

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Seven Secrets to New Business Success — Lessons From Ryuta Hamamoto | TIMEWELL