In a startup, there are only so many things you can figure out sitting by your desk. Often, you’ll eventually learn that the list was actually far shorter than you initially assumed.

Therefore, before you have users, you should spend a lot of time talking to people who could potentially become ones.

However, especially in B2C, it might be hard to find people who are willing to spend this much time with you, and even more difficult to get them to give actionable direction on what to build. Who should you reach out to? What should you ask them? What if they question your fundamental premise? How should you interpret their answers?

To answer all of these questions with five practical rules on how to talk to users, we have Holly Liu, who co-founded and scaled the gaming company Kabam all the way to a $1B acquisition, spent two years as visiting Partner at Y Combinator, and now invests in early-stage companies at PKO.