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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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Customer Validation - 33 Great Articles

SoCal CTO

The other was a consumer play with possible viral growth. Would the consumer one get traction and be viral? In both cases, the answer was that the founder would go to find other ideas, turn those into paper descriptions and validate it with customers. Customer Validation 101. " One was an enterprise software product.

Customer 227
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Document Your MVP for a Developer

SoCal CTO

For example, if you are trying to determine viral coefficient (see Startup Metrics ), then the focus should be around those aspects of the MVP. Customer Development Notes I'm assuming founders are having customer development conversations. Seeing the evolution of thinking is not a bad thing.

Developer 354
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How To Build a Web Startup – Lean LaunchPad Edition

Steve Blank

As part of our Lean LaunchPad classes at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and for the National Science Foundation, students build a startup in 8 weeks using Business Model Design + Customer Development. Set up the Lean LaunchLab or a WordPress blog to document your Customer Development progress. Size the market opportunity.

Lean 333
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Why Too Many Startups (er) Suck

Steve Blank

The product is so good, helpful, and easy to use that it literally almost does its own marketing organically through the product’s viral nature, just as Hotmail and Gmail have done since inception. Filed under: Customer Development. It scaled like lightning by solving an urgent, painful problem for millions of consumers.

Startup 332
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Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

Startup Lessons Learned

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." Here, the key metrics are Acquisition and Referral, combined into the now-famous viral coefficient. If the coefficient is > 1.0 , you generally have a viral hit on your hands.

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Pricing determines your business

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. 1/mo means you can’t afford customer service and it must incrementally free to run the technology behind it, both of which have implications for the sort of product you have to build (e.g. Think: GoDaddy).