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Customer Development is Not a Focus Group

Steve Blank

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” The reaction from our software guys was a little less kind. “Are All I had done was proudly go out and get customer input. And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

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The Customer Development Manifesto: Reasons for the Revolution.

Steve Blank

In the next few posts that follow, I’ll describe more specifically how this model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. —– Part 2 of the Customer Development Manifesto to follow. related recent reading: The Customer Development Manifesto: Reasons for the Revolution, The Customer Development [.]

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Times Square Strategy Session – Web Startups and Customer Development

Steve Blank

I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the Customer Development model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” It’s an impressive portfolio.

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It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem

ConversionXL

The product or website (be it software, e-commerce, or a service) might be awesome , but if it puts itself in front of the wrong market, or packages itself so the right market can’t figure out why it’s awesome, the startup will fail. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development?

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Lessons Learned: Customer Development Engineering

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Can this methodology be used for startups that are not exclusively about software?

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The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development

Startup Lessons Learned

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Four Steps primarily centers its stories and case studies on B2B hardware and software startups.

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Lessons Learned: What is customer development?

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? For software, we have many - you can enjoy a nice long list on Wikipedia. But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." This is a common mistake.