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By brantcooper, July 28, 2010 7:36 pm

Now a couple of days away from the Lean Startup Machine startup weekend, I wanted to get down some initial thoughts on the event.  When approached about participating in the event, I was immediately intrigued by the idea, as long as it took the lean startup principles seriously.  Much to their credit, organizers Trevor Owens, Ben Fisher and Kyle Kelly were open to any and all ideas to make the event conform to Lean Startup and customer development principles.  And much to Eric Ries‘ credit, he threw his support behind the idea once such conformity was demonstrated.  Still, this was an experiment.

The more one adopts these principles, the more one can find ways to adopt them in all areas of life — they become “meta,” as Patrick Vlaskovits would say — and this event was no exception.  It was Lean Startup Machine’s Minimum Viable Product.

By all accounts (that I’ve heard), the event was a rousing success.  Here are some more or less random thoughts about the weekend, some of which I hope to cover in more depth soon:

1) I’m blown away by the people who attended: smart, opinionated, creative, dedicated team-players with some really interesting ideas.  And they all want to be startup founders.  Many will scoff at whether this is a good thing or not, but I think it’s great.

2) Customer Development is a great conflict resolution tool.  When you reach a loggerhead, formulate opposing opinions as hypotheses and go test them.

3) While there was reluctance among some and a few Engineers stayed inside completely, whole teams hit the streets of NYC to engage customers.  It was awesome to see!  I can’t wait for the video.

4) Clearly enterprise B2B ideas are at a disadvantage when it comes to weekend customer development.  But B2C rocked it and B2SMB took advantage of New York’s vast number of local businesses.

5) Good team balance was essential.  Those teams with naturally social members kicked customer development butt.  People were making phone calls to business owners across the country, setting up Craigslist ads, conducting surveys, interviewing by telephone and pounding the pavement for person-to-person discussions.  There was more combined customer development in one weekend than most startups do in a year!

6) Customer Development is hard.  Several assumptions were crushed over the weekend and for the more brutal failings, there were no easy follow on steps.  It’s one thing for a market segment to fail, it’s another when a core idea is roundly  rejected.  But it happened.   It’s easy to become demoralized by negative validation, but the teams pressed on.

7) We saw some amazing pivots, product mockups that reflected the changes, and then customer validation of the pivots!  That’s pretty amazing for a weekend’s work.

8 ) Some people had a tough time understanding the difference between seeking evidence for their idea and testing their assumptions.

9) This event has great potential.  There were some rough spots, but no major problems and the learning that went on was tremendous.

10) It will be interesting to hear more feedback, but my general impression is that this was the first real encounter with customer development for most of the participants and that the experience they gained was invaluable.  My belief is that to truly grok customer development, you must “get a win;” meaning you need to experience first hand the empowerment that comes from customer validated ideas.  I think we had a lot of that!

If there’s something in particular you’d like to hear more about the weekend, please let me know in comments.

Comments (2)

By brantcooper, June 14, 2010 12:22 pm

Last December, I created the first version of this image, depicting how you might think through your customer acquisition and conversion funnel.

In January, I modified the image and added tooltips.

In April, a newer, tighter version was released in The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development. (We will update the image in the ebook with this one.)

Today’s version is tighter still, I believe and is self-explanatory.  I don’t think the tooltips are necessary, if you carefully read through the boxes from left to right.  (Reading the old tooltips might provide some clarity, if necessary.)

I’ve added a few notes on funnel stages, as well as a blank version (in a variety of formats) to my Customer Development Tips download. (Other tips included, too!)

Here’s the new version:

click on image for full size

Comments (4)

By brantcooper, May 26, 2010 12:23 pm

The consultants came out in droves to weigh in on Steve Blank’s recent post, “Consultants Don’t Pivot, Founders Do.” (Myself included.)  Generally, all were in agreement with Blank’s primary point:

Founders get out of the building (physically or virtually) to test their hypotheses against reality. There are times when customers are going to tell you something that you don’t want to hear.  Or you’re going to hear something completely unexpected or orthogonal to what you expected.

As I like to say, those that hold the assumptions need to test the assumptions.   In the comments, several of us pointed out that teaching Customer Development is a viable service for which entrepreneurs can hire outside consultants. Sean Murphy:

We work with teams as they prepare for and then execute the customer discovery and validation steps in B2B markets. We helping them rehearse leaving the BatCave, we often go with them on customer discovery interviews or sale calls, we debrief from prospect meetings to formalize lessons learned and adjust the sales presentation or the target prospect definition or sometimes the feature set.

Clearly, there’s some value being provided here.  In my experience, entrepreneurs have repeatedly sought help with both Customer Development basics, as well as some of its more nuanced components.  Sean Ellis raises a separate issue, agreeing that consultants can provide value, but wondering how the economics work.

I believe the need is there and most consultants have the expertise to fill the need; the problem is that their cost exceeds their value at this stage.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is a challenge, but there’s more that one way to skin a cat, so I’m not sure such a blanket statement is accurate.  (Note that Ellis isn’t suggesting that consultants don’t provide fair value for their compensation, but that the compensation is likely to be too high for the particular stage the business is in.)

This begs the question, what exactly can be outsourced and at what cost?

What Part of Customer Development Can be Outsourced?

It’s worth pointing out that one of the best Customer Development practitioners I know is Cindy Alvarez, who is a Product Manager and not a founder at KISSMetrics. Theoretically, at least, Alvarez could be doing what she does as a consultant, rather than as an employee.  If she had internal assistance (say, a less Senior PM  or a technical marketer), she could potentially have two or to three clients and perhaps make a pretty good living.  And while KISS is likely at or near Product-Market Fit, Cindy has been executing Customer Development for them for quite awhile.

As with employees, the key element to working with consultants is trust.   Further, Founders must process outside information to make decisions.  Is it better, for example, for Founders to pivot based on analytics than Customer Development information provided by a trusted adviser?  If a Founder has a “salesperson mentality,” and cannot stop selling when supposed to be listening, does that doom the company?  Or can a trusted adviser steeped in Customer Development best practices provide better information?

The more I reflect, the more I think blanket statements about what can or cannot be outsourced are dubious at best.  Learning must happen.  How it happens is not particularly relevant.  The key measure is willingness to learn.  If you belong to one of the archetypes of anti-lean, you are not likely to do Customer Development anyway.  If you are willing to learn, you can likely learn from a trusted consultant, too.  I do think the level of understanding potentially suffers, however, so the stage of Customer Development you’re in should influence who the lead CustDev actors should be and what other roles might benefit the process.

In the book, Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development, we break Customer Discovery down into three stages:

• Problem-Solution fit, i.e., validating your core C-P-S (Customer-Problem-Solution) assumptions:  This is the most important stage for Founders to be heavily involved in.  Consultants might help you articulate your assumptions, define market segments, find prospects to talk to, help prepare the presentation and the presenter, and help analyze results.  I have, in fact, also done the interviews for a Founder with both positive and negative results.
• MVP development: Best if Founders are still heavily involved with early adopters, since they likely need to hone in on the core value they’re providing.  I don’t see much value in consultants here, other than help with process,, like coaching Product Managers (and Founders) to not engage in feature mongering.  This phase requires a dedication to minimum viability, and a balance between customer-driven solution and vision.  If the two diverge, a pivot is required and only Founders pivot.
• Proposed Funnel, i.e., learning your sales and marketing roadmap:  Founders need to be engaged relative to their adamancy regarding their sales and marketing assumptions.  Other business model assumptions are typically exposed here, as well.  I believe consultants can play a larger role in this phase, since many founders can use a lot of help thinking through marketing basics.  Consultants might help with defining market segments, proposing funnel hypotheses, and preparing (or conducting) conversations, surveys, etc., to test and validate assumptions.

Clearly I believe a high level of Founder involvement is necessary.  Founders who actually practice Customer Development themselves are arguably in a better position than those that delegate.  But not only are there parts of Customer Discovery that can be effectively delegated, consultants may have a role as well.  The question remains, however, whether (1) consultants can make a living doing this, and (2) whether startups can afford fees that result in (1).

What Model Works for Outsourcing Customer Development?

I know several individuals who practice customer development as consultants.  Clearly, Sean Murphy has found a model that works for him and his clients; Nick O’Connor is another.  I have helped several clients, though finding the right model has been a challenge.  I am passionate about working with early stage companies and have done so for years as a volunteer mentor at San Diego’s CONNECT Springboard program.  Figuring out how to make some money, too, isn’t a bad thing and admittedly, I’ve struggled to find the right model that serves well early stage Founders.

Recently, Patrick Vlaskovits, pointed to me a startup lawyer with a unique business model, Kevin Houchin. Houchin charges a low monthly retainer for a long(ish) range commitment, which allows clients unlimited contact, but not unlimited access.  So I’m trying the same thing. So far, so good!  I haven’t solved my scaling problem, but I get to work with some great entrepreneurs who are willing and able to execute on Customer Development principles.  They are high-energy, have bought into Customer Development and truly value (and benefit from) feedback, pointers and actionable recommendations.  For more information, see here.

In light of this more in-depth conversation regarding outsourcing and leaving aside for a moment, the general evils of consultants, what do you think about outsourcing components of Customer Development?

Comments (6)

By brantcooper, May 12, 2010 6:46 pm

I hope my PR friends won’t hate me after this post, but the point needs to be repeated:  Startups should not hire PR agencies.  It seems not a week goes by without hearing about young companies blowing huge wads of cash on “marketing” they’re not ready for.  Some entrepreneurs get in this fix because they fail to distinguish between PR and other marketing tactics.  They know intuitively or are told they ‘need marketing,’ but the first thing they think of is PR.  As I’ve mentioned before, PR <> Advertising <> Word of Mouth <> Social Media, etc.

Before you hire a PR agency or even consider PR, the first thing you need to understand is what you are trying to accomplish, what is your objective.  Second, you should consider whether that objective is right for the stage of your business.  If you are an early startup, pre Product-Market fit, or even pre “Sales and Marketing Roadmap,” you should not hire a PR firm.

Hiring an agency is wrong, because, generally:

• You do not need press releases
• You do not need a campaign blitz of articles and press mentions
• Your PR firm does not know how to do your customer messaging or positioning for you
• Your PR firm should be no where near your social media
• Most PR firms will tell you need all of the above, that they are the experts and you aren’t, and will try to charge you a retainer of at least 5K/month

You do not need press releases.

Do your customers read press releases?  Does anyone?   Press releases were originally intended to notify media of a newsworthy story.  In the high-tech world, releases have been so abused by businesses blasting trivial events on the one side and by media outlets writing “stories” that repeat the content without critique or judgment that the credibility of releases has diminished significantly.  And it’s getting worse.  Online releases are used not to provide notice to interested parties, but rather to generate external links in  order to boost PageRank.  If your objective is the latter, there are several online PR services that will accomplish your goal for a lot less money.

You do not need a campaign blitz of articles and press mentions.

An agency orchestrated analyst and media tour and blogger outreach program is called “awareness” marketing, is intended to create “buzz” about your product and company, and can indirectly lead to increased visits to your web site by prospective customers.  Hiring an agency to lead this effort is still the best way to go, because a good firm not only has a great rolodex of media contacts, but the principals have relationships with the media that mean increased credibility and better press.  The problem is that startups are not ready for the buzz.  You can only launch once and if you blow it, it’s blown.   If your selling process isn’t tuned to your customer’s buying process, if your target market segment isn’t finely tuned, if you product doesn’t provide enough value to retain users and you need to pivot, you’ve likely wasted your one chance at not blowing the Techcrunch bump.

Further, as you grow and learn more about the market, you want to cultivate your own relationships with key figures in your industry.  Since reporters and analysts participate in social media, access to them through your network without the assistance of a PR agency is pretty easy.

PR firms do not know how to do your customer messaging or positioning

I find this one particularly irksome, because PR firms often tout their ability to develop messaging and positioning.   And they can do a good job when targeting the media and analysts. PR firms do not know your products, customers, or competitors.  You do, so it’s your responsibility to learn what messaging and positioning works in your market.   The key verb here is learning. You should be testing your positioning through Customer Development interviews and A/B testing.  There’s a large pool of talented and creative people (including PR professionals) who can help you brainstorm concepts and wordsmith phrases, but outsourcing the effort to an agency is a recipe for bland, undifferentiated marketing-speak.  Further, wrong positioning, like placing you in the wrong market, could ultimately lead to your startup’s demise.

PR firms do not belong any where near your social media

Big companies hire PR agencies to manager their social media streams, because they don’t want to screw up their brand.  It’s spin, baby, spin.  It’s used as a continuation of traditional one-way communication from company to consumer or as a new (mostly) one-way communication from consumer to company black hole.  This is likely not your social media strategy.  Your strategy likely is to belong to a community through active participation (in ways that don’t directly benefit you), and to provide value unique to you and your business.  You might retweet interesting articles that relate to your industry, answer questions unrelated to your business, or even give props to competitors who have done something positive.  Such activity requires intimate knowledge of your products, customers and community and you cannot expect a PR agency to have that level of knowledge.

Most PR firms will tell you need all of the above, that they are the experts and you aren’t, and will try to charge you a retainer of at least 5K/month

PR agencies are in a tough place.  Online PR resources; reporters, analysts and influential bloggers easily accessible to businesses; decreased use of traditional (e.g., print) media; and a legacy of a high-priced retainer fee structure portents poorly for traditional agencies.  Hence the move to make their case as the natural purveyors of social media marketing.  For the reasons given above, however, I beg to differ.

Which isn’t to say, you should never do PR.

At Eric Ries’ Startup Lessons Learned conference last month, I participated on the Customer Development panel and we were asked if PR was ever justified.  While moderator Sean Ellis and fellow-panelist David Binetti rightly pointed you shouldn’t do PR campaigns, as I discuss above, I mentioned that there are ways to use PR activities in “small” ways to help you achieve discrete objectives.  Low-level PR can help build an “expertise reputation” for a Founder without compromising the company.  Low-level PR might help you access specific industry contacts who you feel may be early adopters. The distinction here is that you’re not trying to build “buzz,” but rather are taking discrete steps to achieve a defined objective within the context of the stage of your business.  For these tasks, you can do them yourself or you might hire a PR consultant and pay them by task or by hour.

Finally, some believe that buzz is required to raise capital.  I don’t know, but I have a hard time believing that’s true.  I do know that I’m not sure I would want money from someone who could not see through the ruse of manufactured buzz.

Comments welcome!

Comments (1)

By Patrick Vlaskovits, April 29, 2010 1:11 pm

Brant and I have finally finished our book, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development:  A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany, within which we have included interviews from successful entrepreneurs in order see if their startup experiences mesh well with Brant’s and my interpretation of and experiences with Customer Development.  (I won’t beat around the bush, while our interviewees may not have called it Customer Development per se, they certainly practiced elements of what Steve Blank has codified as Customer Development in almost all but name.  And without exception, they applied fierce and relentless skepticism to all aspects of their businesses.)

We’ve had the pleasure of speaking with Jeff Smith (Smule), Fabrice Grinda (Zyngy, OLX), Ranjith Kumaran (YouSendIt), and Bruce Moeller (DriveCam).  We’ve condensed their experiences into case studies which are featured in the book.  However, there was so much great material, we simply could not include all of it.  Therefore, I’d like to take this opportunity to share an insight that came out of our interview with Bruce that we found quite edifying, one that goes to the heart of the Customer Development methodologies.

Background:  DriveCam uses video technology, expert analysis and driver coaching to reduce claims costs and saves lives by improving the way people drive.  From the DriveCam website:

DriveCam’s palm-sized, exception based video event recorder is mounted on the windshield behind the rearview mirror and captures sights and sounds inside and outside the vehicle. Exceptional forces such as hard braking, swerving, collision, etc. cause the recorder to save critical seconds of audio and video footage immediately before and after the triggered event.

[Emphasis mine.]

Bruce shared an interesting story about how assumptions made in the lab, based on data and “sophisticated” math undertaken by “sophisticated” analysts, fared in the real world of cement mixer trucks.  Remember, the DriveCam device’s core feature is to record audio and video when triggered by exceptional forces such as swerving.  When DriveCam went after the cement mixer truck market, they calibrated their devices based on the assumption that cement mixers would flip only if subject to a large sideways g force.

Seems reasonable, right?  After all, cement mixers are big, heavy trucks, and not to mention, filled with, well, the eponymous cement.

Turns out, not so reasonable after all.

Bruce recounted that when one of their first customer’s cement mixer trucks flipped over, the DriveCam device had failed to record what had occurred and what may have caused the accident — the customer was irate and Bruce was more than a little embarrassed.

Turns out that (outside of the lab!) cement mixers trucks can flip at very low speeds (1-2 mph) while at normal g forces when encountering things in the chaos of the real world, very ordinary and common things such as soft road shoulders.  Bruce’s customer knew this and was counting on Bruce and the DriveCam team to know this as well.

Lesson learned:

“My philosophy is you don’t know what you don’t know and if you were ever right in a given moment, and if your guesses were ever true it would be serendipitous.  You must attack your assumptions at all times. My basic tenet: question yourself, because the world is ever-changing.”

-Bruce Moeller

For more insights that speak directly to the Customer Development processes, please purchase The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development:  A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany.