
A Field Guide for Navigating to Authentic Demand
Framework
by
Matt Chanoff, Merrick Furst, Daniel Sabbah, and Mark Wegman
2023
2023
A framework book on how to find something people will buy by first identifying authentic demand in potential customers. Two of the authors, Merrick Furst and Matt Chanoff, founded Flashpoint, Georgia Tech’s startup engineering studio. The premise is that innovation, something that changes people’s behavior, starts with demand, not a solution. The goal is to identify situations in which people are nonindifferent. Doing this requires a mindset shift: focusing on the situation someone is in rather than your idea, solution, or even the problem you think they have. Through documented customer interactions and other tools, the authors lay out their framework and provide case studies of entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs who used it to uncover authentic demand and build solutions that scaled.

August 2026
Great explanation of documented customer interactions (DPIs) in appendix. Read 2023 paperback


