Top 3 Ways to Fail at Customer Development: Fail #1 - Talk talk talk Fail #2 - ??????? ???? Customer Development Entrepreneurship Lean startupFail #3 - Being Gullible. MORE
Most startups fail. 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. MORE
The Japanese edition of The Startup Owner’s Manual hit the bookstores in Japan this week. I asked Tsutsumi-san to write a guest post for my blog to describe his experience with Customer Development in Japan. But customers didn’t agree. Customer Development Education. MORE
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. Here’s hoping they soon tackle Customer Validation. MORE
It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with. The Four Steps drew the distinction that “startups are not smaller versions of large companies.” MORE
The goal of the class is to expose students to the basics of the Lean Methodology – Business Model Design , Customer Development and Agile Engineering. The teams come back into the class and present what they found, and then they get out and talk to more customers. MORE
This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. MORE
It’s the combination of Business Model Design and Customer Development. Today every business organization from startup to large company uses the words “business model.” Business Model Design Gets Dynamic, Customer Development Gets Strategic. MORE
A few weeks ago, I spoke at the Modev MVP Conference and the Lean+Agile DC Conference about using a bootstrapped Customer Development approach to pursuing a new product idea in an existing company. MORE
Startup Marketing Blog – By Sean Ellis Unlocking Startup Growth By Sean Ellis of 12in6 May 18th 09 Free Customer Development Help – Survey.io I’m excited to announce a project that I’ve been working on with KISSmetrics called Survey.io , which provides startups with a free and easy way to prepare, distribute and analyze an initial customer development survey. Posted in Acquiring Customers , Competitors , Customer Development. MORE
The obvious answer we all give (and receive) in the startup community is to talk to people. Customer development” has become its own skill and body of knowledge, and there are some crucial nuances to understand up front before beginning your customer dev discussions. With that in the back of our minds, let’s dive into a few of those crucial first-step nuances as you look to gain traction and hold successful customer development conversations. MORE
After I read Four Steps to the Epiphany, there was only one: Get out of the building and talk to customers! Lean Startups Product/Market Fit Customer Development experiment design survey MORE
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development , Investment Readiness Level , Lean LaunchPad. Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan Customer Development Investment Readiness Level Lean LaunchPad MORE
A month ago, Jason, one of my founder friends, shut down his startup. Customer Development for us meant a lot of hard-won learnings. startup accelerator, where we spent 16 hours a day in a basement to finish the first working version of our app. MORE
Startups are not smaller versions of large companies, but interestingly we see that companies are not larger versions of startups. While they both emphasize getting out of the building and taking to customers, they’re not the same. MORE
Customer Development is a technique startups use to quickly iterate and test each part of their business model. How you execute Customer Development varies, depending on your type of business. Go read both of his posts on Discovery and Validation for web startups. MORE
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Very few startups fail for lack of technology. MORE
My startup instincts were terrible. And while “saved our startup” may seem dramatic, it really isn’t. Each of these books has a significant impact on how we approached a key area of our startup. This was the single biggest step-function change for our startup. MORE
Today we are announcing the biggest entrepreneurial program ever launched – Startup Weekend Next. Our goal– to inspire, educate and empower hundred’s of thousands of entrepreneurs and help create 10,000 startups. The result – Startup Weekend Next. MORE
I had a brief email conversation with a startup founder struggling with how to tackle customer development in marketplace business models. Customer Development does not equal User Acquisition. Customer development is a method for discovering, testing and validating user acquisition and conversion methods. To put it another way, the business doesn’t exist without product, but doesn’t succeed without customers. MORE
Most customers tolerate bugs. Most customers tolerate products with missing features that they need (or think they need!) Most customers tolerate the quirks and hiccups that come with new technology and software. Customers can be quite forgiving. Even the feeling or inkling of being ignored can set customers into a rage; and worse, have them looking for alternative solutions to yours. And use those customer interactions to learn from them. MORE
In previous posts I’ve talked about what the combination of Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Methodologies mean to startups and intrapreneurs in large companies; it’s the beginning of entrepreneurship as a science with its own rules and methodologies. My public talk at Columbia University was part of their Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Startup lecture series. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development. MORE
We talk a lot about Customer Development, but there’s nothing like seeing it in action to understand its power. But the big payoff came when their discussions with medical device customers revealed an entirely new way to think about pricing —potentially tripling their revenue. MORE
Crafting good hypotheses for your startup is hard. Here’s an example of a hypothesis I might have for NextMontreal (which is primarily a content site on startup news for Montreal): “I believe that U.S.-based based investors will read NextMontreal on a regular basis because they have a growing interest in the Montreal startup ecosystem.&#. based investors have a growing interest in the Montreal startup ecosystem.&#. Tweet. MORE
Market By Numbers on Twitter | Entries RSS | Comments RSS Market By Numbers High-Tech Marketing and Customer Development Home What is Customer Development? The key to effective conversations is in developing the conversation around your objectives for the discussion. MORE
Market By Numbers on Twitter | Entries RSS | Comments RSS Market By Numbers High-Tech Marketing and Customer Development Home What is Customer Development? Post-Launch Customer Development These are tricky waters for the reasons described above. MORE
It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. Most startups fail. The most common mistake startups make is assuming they can operate the same way big companies do, and expect success with little to no feedback from potential customers. MORE
The Customer Happiness Canvas is a tool for teams to visualize strategies for getting and keeping customers. The post Guest Post: Introducing The Customer Happiness Canvas appeared first on GrasshopperHerder.com. MORE
The Harvard Business Review is offering free reprints of the May 2013 cover article, “ Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything “ Available here. MORE
Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. Over 10 weeks each team gets out and talks to 100 customers. MORE
It’s now clear to me that not building that crawling technology early on was one of the reasons our startup succeeded. Many Startups Take the “Manual-First” Startup Approach. I know because Yipit was one of the first startups to use AngelList to raise funding. MORE
Implementing the Lean Startup in any company is hard. Now compound that level of effort with trying to put a Lean Startup culture in place in Japan. Technology centric leads to companies ignoring their customers and the challenge is that they don’t do customer interviews. If you can’t see the presentation click here Filed under: Corporate Innovation , Customer Development Manifesto. Corporate Innovation Customer Development Manifesto MORE
Customer development is hard. Customer Development Lean StartupsIt takes work to get it right and you'll always be improving your technique. Here are a few tips I like to keep in my head while I'm getting out of the building. MORE
If you can’t see the video click here Filed under: 2 Minute Lessons , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching. 2 Minute Lessons Business Model versus Business Plan Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching MORE
Year One Labs is a Lean Startup accelerator. I believe it’s one of the first of its kind, with a very heavy focus on customer development and a rigorous Lean Startup process. Since our launch we’ve co-created and invested in 5 startups (which was our target number). MORE
If you can’t see the video click here Filed under: 2 Minute Lessons , Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development. 2 Minute Lessons Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan Customer Development MORE
Scalable startups are on a trajectory for a billion dollar market cap. But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. MORE
As painful and frustrating as it is, many successful product people I’ve … Continue reading Using Customer Development To Create The Business Case For Your New Product. The post Using Customer Development To Create The Business Case For Your New Product appeared first on Street Smart Product Manager. Many of my product help calls are from folks frustrated with being able to pursue a new product in an existing company. MORE
When Bob Dorf and I wrote the Startup Owners Manual we listed a series of Customer Development principles. I thought they might be worth enumerating here: A Startup Is a Temporary Organization Designed to Search. Pair Customer Development with Agile Development. MORE
Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” As the engineers were busy rearchitecting the original Stanford MIPS chip into a commercial product, one of my jobs was to find out what features customers wanted. One of the specific requests from our chip architects was to find out whether customers would want the chip to have data stored as big-endian or little-endian. MORE
It’s now clear to me that not building that crawling technology early on was one of the reasons our startup succeeded. Many Startups Take the “Manual-First” Startup Approach. I know because Yipit was one of the first startups to use AngelList to raise funding. MORE
He’s now run several Lean LaunchPad classes and has seen a ton of healthcare startups. Here’s his advice for startups in this space. Over the past couple of years as Director of Innovation for Intermountain Healthcare I’ve mentored and worked with many Healthcare-focused startups. MORE
Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. MORE
Steve Blank
MARCH 29, 2012
When Bob Dorf and I wrote the Startup Owners Manual we listed a series of Customer Development principles. I thought they might be worth enumerating here: A Startup Is a Temporary Organization Designed to Search. Pair Customer Development with Agile Development.
Steve Blank
JULY 30, 2014
Startups are not smaller versions of large companies, but interestingly we see that companies are not larger versions of startups. While they both emphasize getting out of the building and taking to customers, they’re not the same.
Grasshopper Herder
JULY 17, 2012
Customer development is hard. Customer Development Lean StartupsIt takes work to get it right and you'll always be improving your technique. Here are a few tips I like to keep in my head while I'm getting out of the building.
Instigator Blog
OCTOBER 27, 2011
Most customers tolerate bugs. Most customers tolerate products with missing features that they need (or think they need!) Most customers tolerate the quirks and hiccups that come with new technology and software. Customers can be quite forgiving. Even the feeling or inkling of being ignored can set customers into a rage; and worse, have them looking for alternative solutions to yours. And use those customer interactions to learn from them.
Steve Blank
FEBRUARY 25, 2010
Customer Development is a technique startups use to quickly iterate and test each part of their business model. How you execute Customer Development varies, depending on your type of business. Go read both of his posts on Discovery and Validation for web startups.
Steve Blank
MAY 6, 2013
The Harvard Business Review is offering free reprints of the May 2013 cover article, “ Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything “ Available here.
View from Seed
OCTOBER 22, 2015
The obvious answer we all give (and receive) in the startup community is to talk to people. Customer development” has become its own skill and body of knowledge, and there are some crucial nuances to understand up front before beginning your customer dev discussions. With that in the back of our minds, let’s dive into a few of those crucial first-step nuances as you look to gain traction and hold successful customer development conversations.
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 5, 2009
Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail.
Grasshopper Herder
SEPTEMBER 15, 2011
Top 3 Ways to Fail at Customer Development: Fail #1 - Talk talk talk Fail #2 - ??????? ???? Customer Development Entrepreneurship Lean startupFail #3 - Being Gullible.
Market by Numbers
SEPTEMBER 2, 2010
Market By Numbers on Twitter | Entries RSS | Comments RSS Market By Numbers High-Tech Marketing and Customer Development Home What is Customer Development? The key to effective conversations is in developing the conversation around your objectives for the discussion.
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 30, 2009
Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” As the engineers were busy rearchitecting the original Stanford MIPS chip into a commercial product, one of my jobs was to find out what features customers wanted. One of the specific requests from our chip architects was to find out whether customers would want the chip to have data stored as big-endian or little-endian.
Startup Lessons Learned
NOVEMBER 8, 2008
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Very few startups fail for lack of technology.
Steve Blank
OCTOBER 22, 2014
If you can’t see the video click here Filed under: 2 Minute Lessons , Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development. 2 Minute Lessons Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan Customer Development
Vinicius Vacanti
MAY 7, 2013
It’s now clear to me that not building that crawling technology early on was one of the reasons our startup succeeded. Many Startups Take the “Manual-First” Startup Approach. I know because Yipit was one of the first startups to use AngelList to raise funding.
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 15, 2010
In previous posts I’ve talked about what the combination of Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Methodologies mean to startups and intrapreneurs in large companies; it’s the beginning of entrepreneurship as a science with its own rules and methodologies. My public talk at Columbia University was part of their Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Startup lecture series. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development.
Grasshopper Herder
SEPTEMBER 30, 2014
After I read Four Steps to the Epiphany, there was only one: Get out of the building and talk to customers! Lean Startups Product/Market Fit Customer Development experiment design survey
conversionxl.com
SEPTEMBER 10, 2013
It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. Most startups fail. The most common mistake startups make is assuming they can operate the same way big companies do, and expect success with little to no feedback from potential customers.
Street Smart Product Manager
SEPTEMBER 28, 2014
As painful and frustrating as it is, many successful product people I’ve … Continue reading Using Customer Development To Create The Business Case For Your New Product. The post Using Customer Development To Create The Business Case For Your New Product appeared first on Street Smart Product Manager. Many of my product help calls are from folks frustrated with being able to pursue a new product in an existing company.
Steve Blank
OCTOBER 30, 2012
Today we are announcing the biggest entrepreneurial program ever launched – Startup Weekend Next. Our goal– to inspire, educate and empower hundred’s of thousands of entrepreneurs and help create 10,000 startups. The result – Startup Weekend Next.
Vinicius Vacanti
MAY 7, 2013
It’s now clear to me that not building that crawling technology early on was one of the reasons our startup succeeded. Many Startups Take the “Manual-First” Startup Approach. I know because Yipit was one of the first startups to use AngelList to raise funding.
Grasshopper Herder
JUNE 23, 2017
The Customer Happiness Canvas is a tool for teams to visualize strategies for getting and keeping customers. The post Guest Post: Introducing The Customer Happiness Canvas appeared first on GrasshopperHerder.com.
Steve Blank
JULY 9, 2015
He’s now run several Lean LaunchPad classes and has seen a ton of healthcare startups. Here’s his advice for startups in this space. Over the past couple of years as Director of Innovation for Intermountain Healthcare I’ve mentored and worked with many Healthcare-focused startups.
Market by Numbers
JANUARY 12, 2011
I had a brief email conversation with a startup founder struggling with how to tackle customer development in marketplace business models. Customer Development does not equal User Acquisition. Customer development is a method for discovering, testing and validating user acquisition and conversion methods. To put it another way, the business doesn’t exist without product, but doesn’t succeed without customers.
Startup Lessons Learned
JULY 5, 2010
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. Here’s hoping they soon tackle Customer Validation.
Startup Marketing Blog
MAY 18, 2009
Startup Marketing Blog – By Sean Ellis Unlocking Startup Growth By Sean Ellis of 12in6 May 18th 09 Free Customer Development Help – Survey.io I’m excited to announce a project that I’ve been working on with KISSmetrics called Survey.io , which provides startups with a free and easy way to prepare, distribute and analyze an initial customer development survey. Posted in Acquiring Customers , Competitors , Customer Development.
Steve Blank
APRIL 16, 2013
It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with. The Four Steps drew the distinction that “startups are not smaller versions of large companies.”
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 17, 2015
Implementing the Lean Startup in any company is hard. Now compound that level of effort with trying to put a Lean Startup culture in place in Japan. Technology centric leads to companies ignoring their customers and the challenge is that they don’t do customer interviews. If you can’t see the presentation click here Filed under: Corporate Innovation , Customer Development Manifesto. Corporate Innovation Customer Development Manifesto
Steve Blank
JULY 3, 2014
If you can’t see the video click here Filed under: 2 Minute Lessons , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching. 2 Minute Lessons Business Model versus Business Plan Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching
Instigator Blog
MAY 5, 2011
Crafting good hypotheses for your startup is hard. Here’s an example of a hypothesis I might have for NextMontreal (which is primarily a content site on startup news for Montreal): “I believe that U.S.-based based investors will read NextMontreal on a regular basis because they have a growing interest in the Montreal startup ecosystem.&#. based investors have a growing interest in the Montreal startup ecosystem.&#. Tweet.
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 17, 2009
This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.
Steve Blank
OCTOBER 31, 2014
Scalable startups are on a trajectory for a billion dollar market cap. But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year.
Steve Blank
MAY 1, 2015
A month ago, Jason, one of my founder friends, shut down his startup. Customer Development for us meant a lot of hard-won learnings. startup accelerator, where we spent 16 hours a day in a basement to finish the first working version of our app.
Vinicius Vacanti
AUGUST 14, 2012
My startup instincts were terrible. And while “saved our startup” may seem dramatic, it really isn’t. Each of these books has a significant impact on how we approached a key area of our startup. This was the single biggest step-function change for our startup.
Steve Blank
DECEMBER 2, 2013
We talk a lot about Customer Development, but there’s nothing like seeing it in action to understand its power. But the big payoff came when their discussions with medical device customers revealed an entirely new way to think about pricing —potentially tripling their revenue.
ConversionXL
SEPTEMBER 6, 2013
Most startups fail. 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.
Steve Blank
FEBRUARY 28, 2017
The goal of the class is to expose students to the basics of the Lean Methodology – Business Model Design , Customer Development and Agile Engineering. The teams come back into the class and present what they found, and then they get out and talk to more customers.
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 25, 2013
Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. Over 10 weeks each team gets out and talks to 100 customers.
Steve Blank
AUGUST 21, 2015
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development , Investment Readiness Level , Lean LaunchPad. Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan Customer Development Investment Readiness Level Lean LaunchPad
Market by Numbers
SEPTEMBER 13, 2010
Market By Numbers on Twitter | Entries RSS | Comments RSS Market By Numbers High-Tech Marketing and Customer Development Home What is Customer Development? Post-Launch Customer Development These are tricky waters for the reasons described above.
Instigator Blog
JUNE 6, 2011
Year One Labs is a Lean Startup accelerator. I believe it’s one of the first of its kind, with a very heavy focus on customer development and a rigorous Lean Startup process. Since our launch we’ve co-created and invested in 5 startups (which was our target number).
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