Clockwork’s Customer Discovery Playbook: How Early User Feedback Almost Led Them Down the Wrong Path

Every founder knows the mantra: talk to your users. But what happens when user feedback leads you astray? In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Clockwork founder Fady Hawatmeh shared a pivotal moment that nearly derailed his company’s early product development.

The Initial Validation Trap

As an outsourced CFO, Fady was the go-to finance expert for entrepreneurs wrestling with crucial business decisions. “I was the token finance guy among a bunch of entrepreneurs,” he recalls, “and they kept asking me for free models, how can I hire this person? Should we fire these people? Should we lay off? How much money should we raise?”

These conversations led to a seemingly obvious product direction. When Fady asked potential users if they wanted automated financial modeling and cash flow forecasting, the response was enthusiastic. “Everyone gave me a resounding, absolutely. I don’t want to have to lift a finger to do it,” he shares.

Armed with this validation, Fady assembled a development team and spent six months building exactly what users had requested. The investment was substantial, both in time and money.

The Reality Check

But when he returned to those same enthusiastic users with the finished product, something unexpected happened. “I came back to those same people that gave me that exact same feedback and said, ‘hey, great, here’s the product. What do you think?'” The response? “Well, I need to be able to customize this and customize this.”

Fady’s reaction captures the frustration many founders face: “I’m like, you told me that you wanted it automatic.”

The Deeper Insight

This moment led to what Fady calls “a very valuable lesson within my first year of Clockwork.” The key insight wasn’t just about the specific feature requests – it was about understanding the underlying needs that users couldn’t articulate.

“Trust your feedback, but also trust what you know and trust what you see and always push forward,” Fady explains. “Why are they giving you that piece of feedback? Why do they want your software to do X, Y or Z and ask them?”

Turning Insight Into Action

This experience shaped Clockwork’s entire approach to product development. Instead of just building what users explicitly requested, they focused on understanding the deeper problems users were trying to solve.

The result was a more nuanced approach to automation and customization, one that reflected Fady’s deep understanding of how businesses actually handle financial planning. “I know companies that are between one and 25 million in revenue. I know what they are going through,” he notes. This knowledge became a competitive advantage that, as he puts it, “you can’t replicate… even if you raise $100 million.”

The Broader Lesson

The lesson for founders isn’t to ignore user feedback – quite the opposite. As Fady notes, “Users are very open, especially with early stage companies. And I didn’t take enough advantage of that at the beginning.”

Instead, the key is to dig deeper, understanding not just what users say they want, but why they want it. This approach helped Clockwork avoid building a purely automated solution that would have missed the mark, instead creating what Fady describes as “third generation FP&A” – making financial planning both accessible and flexible.

Today, as Clockwork sets its sights on becoming “the workday type platform for every company that makes less than $100 million in revenue,” that early lesson continues to guide their development. Sometimes, the best product insights come not from taking user feedback at face value, but from understanding the deeper needs behind their requests.