# Getting started LetsFindWhy is a video interview platform for customer research. You invite the people you want to learn from, talk with them face to face online, and get a recording and transcript of every conversation, so you find out not just what your customers do, but why. Suppose you’re building a note-taking app: new users keep signing up, but few come back after the first week. Instead of guessing why, you invite a handful of them to short video interviews, ask what got in their way, and watch the answers add up across conversations. This page takes you from a brand-new account to your first finished interview: sign up, create a project, start your free trial, and run a session. No research background needed. ## How LetsFindWhy is organized: projects, processes, and interviews Everything you do in LetsFindWhy lives in a simple hierarchy: - **Organization**: your workspace. It holds your team, your projects, and your subscription. LetsFindWhy creates one for you automatically when you sign up. - **Project**: one research study, such as “Why do new users stop coming back?”. A project holds everything belonging to that study. - **Process**: a track inside a project for one audience or language. A process ties together a screener (a short set of qualifying questions people answer when they sign up), a discussion guide (the list of questions and topics that structures an interview), and its interviews. - **Interview**: a single live video session, either 1:1 or a focus group. People join as the moderator (who runs the session), as panelists (the respondents on camera), or as observers (teammates who watch without being seen). ## How to sign up for LetsFindWhy 1. On the **Sign Up** page, enter your address in the **Email** field. 2. Click **Send sign-in link**. 3. Open the sign-in link we email you. It expires in 15 minutes. 4. On the **Welcome to LetsFindWhy** screen, fill in your **Name** and check the pre-detected country, language, and timezone. 5. If you don’t want to sign in by email link every time, set a **Password (optional)** of at least 8 characters. You can also do this later in your settings. 6. Click **Save and continue** (or **Skip for now**).  *Signing up only needs your email. A sign-in link arrives in your inbox.* You land on the **Start** page, and LetsFindWhy automatically creates an organization named after you. You are its owner, ready to create projects. ## How to create your first project Projects are created from the **Start** page, the screen you land on whenever you open LetsFindWhy. Only an organization’s owner and admins can create projects; since the organization is yours, you’re set. 1. Click **New Project** on your organization’s card (it reads **Create your first project** while the organization has no projects yet). 2. In the **Create Project** dialog, keep **Generate a project from a description** selected. 3. Under **Describe your research**, describe your goals, who you want to talk to, and what you want to learn, or leave the field empty to try the built-in example. 4. Click **Continue** and watch the draft stream in: a project, a process, a discussion guide, and a screener. Edit any section directly, or click **Regenerate** to re-run your brief (regenerating replaces your edits). 5. Click **Create Project**. Everything in the draft is created at once, and your new project opens on its **Dashboard**, which shows each process as a pipeline from recruitment through to interviews.  *Describe your research in plain language, or leave the field empty to try the example.* ### Start from a blank project instead Prefer to set everything up by hand? Choose **Blank project**, enter a **Project Name**, and click **Create Project**. A blank project starts without a process, so add one before creating interviews: 1. Open **Processes** in the project sidebar and click **Add Process**. 2. Give the process a name and at least one language/country pair under **Languages**. 3. Save it. The process appears on the dashboard and as a group on the **Interviews** page. ## How to start your free trial Interviews use billed minutes, so your organization needs an active plan before you can create a session. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial. 1. Open **Usage & Billing** in the sidebar, under **Organization**. 2. Choose a plan. Whichever you pick, it starts with a 14-day free trial. 3. Complete checkout. During the trial, usage is capped at the trial’s billed-minute allowance, enough to run a real first interview before you pay. Without a plan, creating an interview stops with a prompt to subscribe first. For plan sizes and how minutes are counted, see [Billing & usage](https://letsfindwhy.com/docs/billing). ## How to create and run your first interview 1. Open **Interviews** in the project sidebar and click **New Interview** inside your process group. 2. In **Create New Interview**, enter an **Interview Title**. If the process supports several languages, pick one. 3. Set **Expected Respondents**. For a 1:1 interview scheduling is optional; for a focus group (up to 20 people) **Date & Time** is required. 4. Optionally assign a **Discussion Guide** to structure the conversation, and turn on **Use AI Moderator** if you want the AI to run the session for you. 5. Click **Create**. The interview appears with a **SCHEDULED** badge and, if you set a time, the scheduled date. 6. Click **Share** to reveal **Share Links**: one copyable link each for the moderator, panelists, and observers. Send the panelist link to your respondent; they join as a guest by entering a **Display Name** and **Email Address**. 7. Click **Join** to enter the meeting yourself as the moderator. The interview shows **ACTIVE** while it runs and **ENDED** when it’s over.  *Every interview gets a separate join link per role: moderator, panelist, and observer.* If the session was recorded, the recording and its transcript appear on the project’s **Recordings** page shortly after the meeting ends. ## Tips for researchers - Run one process per market or language and field them in parallel. A process’s language/country pairs lock once recruits have signed up for them, so plan the pairs up front. - Don’t want to moderate? Enable **Immediate AI interviews** on a process: each recruited respondent gets a personal link, and a 1:1 AI-moderated session starts the moment they join. It requires a **Default discussion guide**. - Keep reusable materials at organization level: **Discussion Guides** and the **Screener Library** in the sidebar hold guides and screeners you can pull into any project. - Every session records itself, so no interview goes unrecorded and recordings and transcripts pile up ready for analysis. A short countdown warns the room before recording starts, which is a natural cue to tell respondents they’re being recorded. - Give clients and note-takers the observer link. Observers watch without appearing on camera and chat in their own Backroom channel, out of the respondents’ sight. - Budget trial minutes with care: discussion-guide questions of the “With follow-ups” type bill at twice the minutes. ## Related pages - [Projects & organizations](https://letsfindwhy.com/docs/projects-organizations) - [Recruitment & screeners](https://letsfindwhy.com/docs/recruitment) - [Discussion guides](https://letsfindwhy.com/docs/discussion-guides) - [Meetings & live sessions](https://letsfindwhy.com/docs/meetings) - [AI-moderated interviews](https://letsfindwhy.com/docs/ai-moderation) - [Billing & usage](https://letsfindwhy.com/docs/billing)