Note: One of the more difficult aspects of customer development is understanding when to listen to customers/prospects and when not to. When should you rely on intuition and when is the customer right, if not always? Steve Blank’s oft quoted clarion call to “get out of the building” demands that you listen to customers, but not that you necessarily heed what they say! You may have the wrong customer for your business. You may have the right customer who emphasizes the wrong root cause to a problem. As I tweeted the other day:
maybe your product focus should be what your current customers don’t ask for or what your lost customers wanted.
I invited “CustDevGuy,” author of the “Fake Screenshot/LOI” customer development case study, to write up a continuation of that story, which illustrates an easy trap to fall into when interacting with potential customers. Here’s his story:
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Hi there.
This guest-post is a follow-up to my original Case Study posted at the Lean Startup Circle. (Thanks Brant for lending me your digital soapbox.) I wanted to further flesh out an important insight that came out of conversations about my ongoing Customer Development experiences as well as address a common fallacy that keeps popping up in conversations and email threads with regards to what Customer Development is and isn’t. The fallacy being that customers will simply hand over the Holy Grail (read: Product/Market Fit) if you go and chat a bit with them.
Continue reading 'Seller Beware: Customers Have Their Own Agenda'»
Unlike my classmates who headed to Silicon Valley from UC Davis upon graduation, I moved to Washington DC to work for a defense consulting firm. After a couple of years, “I dropped out” to write a novel, which I subsequently finished, explored the country for 3 months, finally landing in San Francisco and beginning my career in technology.
My book was (is) trite and sophomoric. After all, what insights do most 20-somethings have worth sharing? A lack of experience — a lack of failure — makes pontification shallow. One of my younger brothers, who was trying to make a living as a painter at the time, had a great comment. He said that he felt my book, like his art, was merely trying to say too much. That it wasn’t that we didn’t have good things to say, but that there was lack of discipline in focusing and examining in greater depth a few ideas, rather than “letting it all hang out.”
I think young entrepreneurs suffer from a similar malady. Continue reading 'Customer Development Presentation'»
There are many reasons why entrepreneurs don’t, or more accurately won’t adopt lean startup principles. In the last few weeks, I’ve encountered each of the archetypes described below. In each case, the individuals have some awareness of #leanstartup, based on my discussions, as well as sharing Ries’ and Blank’s resources with them. Continue reading '4 Anti-Lean Startup Archetypes'»
(To view prior posts in this series, click here.)
I think I’ve mostly failed to limit product development to minimum viable product (MVP). The essence of MVP is counter-intuitive to entrepreneurs who know what needs to be built. MVP is downright anathema to some wh have actually confirmed suspicions by speaking to customers, e.g. through customer development. Why limit what is built if you’ve confirmed with customers they want it all?
The problem is that the fact that customers tell you they want a feature doesn’t prove anything. The proof is in the payment. Continue reading 'Lean Start-up, Part V – MVP Fail'»
The toughest part about practicing customer development is getting started. You already know that customers are not going to magically find you because you have a great product, work hard and are good looking. Now that you’ve realized how big the world is and that using a megaphone from your roof top is a poor method of user acquisition, what’s next?
Presumably if you are committed to the principles of customer development, you are already committed to “getting out of the building.” Before you can interview potential customers, however, you have to find potential customers to interview. Unfortunately, there are no magic bullets. This is painstaking work. Just as with other portions of the customer development model, to find early adopters you make assumptions, test, and iterate. If you are having trouble getting started, try these steps: Continue reading 'How to find early adopters'»
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