When I was a PM at Google, we conducted customer research often to understand our customers’ opinions on AdSense. In 2005, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were vying to win dominant share of advertising pages across large publishers. Customer knowledge, both quantitative and quantitative, informed product development, and that research became a key part of AdSense’s success. A few years later when I joined Redpoint, I learned that venture capitalists perform similar customer research during diligence. While the ultimate use of the data might differ, the actual investigations and interviews are remarkably alike. During a typical diligence process, we will interview customers and might ask them questions like these...