Discovery Interview Guide for early stage medtech founders

A practical script and checklist to run customer discovery interviews that uncover real behaviour, real pain, and real decision-making, without awkward pitching.

Free PDF. Built around a simple 30-minute interview format.

Why discovery interviews matter

Many medtech ideas fail for a predictable reason: founders build based on assumptions.

They speak to colleagues instead of real users. They ask hypotheticals instead of exploring what actually happened. They hear “sounds useful” and mistake it for demand.
Discovery interviews help you avoid that.

Done well, they help you understand:

  • Whether the problem is real, painful, and frequent
  • Who experiences it (and who influences adoption)
  • What people do today to work around it
  • What would make someone try a new approach, or pay for one

This guide helps you do discovery properly, in a way that fits healthcare settings.

What this guide gives you

This is not theory. It’s a ready-to-use discovery interview script you can take into your next call.

Inside, you’ll get:

  • A clear set of principles to keep you in learning mode (not pitching)
  • A simple 30-minute interview script with example questions
  • Prompts to dig into the “last time” someone faced the problem, step by step
  • Questions to explore alternatives, urgency, and what “better” would look like
  • Practical ways to understand adoption and decision-making in healthcare
  • A simple note-taking tracker so you can spot patterns across interviews
  • What to listen for, plus common red flags that signal weak demand

Everything is designed to help you learn quickly and reduce risk before you build.

This guide is especially useful if you:

  • Are a healthcare professional exploring a startup idea
  • Feel unsure who you should be speaking to (users, buyers, decision-makers)
  • Worry about “wasting people’s time” or sounding salesy
  • Have already done a few interviews but didn’t learn much
  • Want more confidence you’re solving a problem worth fixing

You don’t need a prototype, pitch deck, or finished plan to use it.

Most founders know they “should do interviews”. The hard part is doing them well.

After this guide, you’ll be able to:

  • Start interviews in a way that earns trust quickly
  • Ask about real experiences, not opinions
  • Use silence and curiosity to get beyond surface answers
  • Tell the difference between polite interest and genuine urgency
  • Capture insights consistently so you can compare interviews properly
  • Leave each conversation with clear learning and a sensible next action

The guide helps you avoid common traps, including:

  • Pitching your idea too early
  • Asking leading or hypothetical questions
  • Doing most of the talking
  • Only speaking to people “like you”
    Hearing “interesting” and treating it like commitment
  • Missing the adoption reality: who else needs to be involved

Avoiding these mistakes early can save you months of wasted effort.

Many founders use this guide alongside the Medtech Mentor Starter Pack.

The Starter Pack helps you think holistically about your idea and what to validate.
The Discovery Interview Guide helps you go deeper on one of the most important early steps: learning from real people before you build anything.

Ready to run better discovery interviews?

Download the guide and use the script for your next call. You’re aiming for the truth: what people did, what it cost them, what they tried, and what would make them change.

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