If We Killed Our Product Would You Miss It?
Don’t ask prospects, “If we killed our product would you miss it?” It’s product management malpractice.
If We Killed Our Product Would You Miss It? Read More »
Customer Development
DreamSimplicity Interview Transcript
Here is the transcript–edited for clarity and hyperlinked for context–for my recent interview with Floyd Tucker of DreamSimplicity Marketplace. The focus was on our startup stages model: formation, open for business, early customers, finding a niche, and scaling up.
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Experiments Vs. Commitments
Distinguish between experiments and commitments with customers. Share prototypes and ask for feedback but keep your promises. The easiest way to keep a promise is not to make one, so take great care in what you sign up for.
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Six Elements to Extract From Customer Discovery Interviews
Key takeaways from customer discovery interviews: prospect’s description of their situation, needs, vision for a solution, plan to measure solution impact.
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Customer Development and Its Discontents
It’s hard to test customer development theories: you cannot step into the same river twice and you cannot step into the same market twice.
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Steve Blank Plans to Crowdsource E-Schools
Steve Blank gave a thought provoking talk at the Startup Lessons Learned Conference on “Customer Development 2.0: Why Accountants Don’t Run Startups” (slides here and related blog post “Why Accountants Don’t Run Startups” which is part of a category of blog posts on “Durant vs. Sloan“). He also referenced Robert Shedd‘s list of startup accelerators
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Vivek Wadhwa’s Pointers for Bootstrappers
My top 5 pointers for bootstrappers from Vivek Wadhwa’s “Ditch the Plan Buy a Lottery TIcker” article in Wall Street Journal.
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Startup Lessons Learned Conference Coverage Roundup
This Startup Lessons Learned Conference 2010 recap includes links to the slides, videos, and relevant blog post for each session.
Startup Lessons Learned Conference Coverage Roundup Read More »
Tips For Getting the Most out of SLLConf (Live or Streaming)
Here are tips for getting the most out of the Startup Lessons Learned Conference (SLLConf 2010) including articles to read in advance.
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Moving From Vision to Engagement With Prospects
I had an e-mail exchange with William Pietri (@williampietri) back in October that I am reproducing here with his permission. I believe that it highlights a set of issues around “being in the grip of a vision” in a useful way. William Pietri: I’m wondering how Lean Startup founders handle attacks of vision. Do you
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Listening to Customers
Jensen Huang: “Sometimes you have to ignore your customers and follow Moore’s Law.” But acknowledging Moore’s Law is listening to customers.
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Customer Development Helps Entrepreneurs Assess the Value of an Invention
Colin Cherry in “The Telephone System: Creator of Mobility and Social Change” makes the point that the full impact of an invention is very difficult to predict.
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I Don’t Understand, We Won the Argument, Why Didn’t We Win The Sale?
It’s Rare That You Are Actually Bringing Fire To The Savages If you think you are so much smarter than your customers that you are “bringing fire to the savages” you will find it hard to learn from them and hard to actually close deals. What follows are three true stories. We Won The Argument,
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Saras Sarasvathy’s Effectual Reasoning Model for Expert Entrepreneurs
Update Feb-24-2011: Since I first wrote this in 2010 the Effectuation.Org site has been considerably upgraded and contains a lot more information on research on entrepreneurship by Saras Sarasvathy. Recapping ideas, papers, and books that had changed my life yesterday reminded me of Saras Sarasvathy’s Effectual Reasoning Model from her 2001 paper “What Makes Entrepreneurs
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Two Customer Development Examples: SixApart & WowzaMedia
I answered a question recently for real examples of teams using customer development approaches to software startups and drafted the following reply for two customer development examples.
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Sean Murphy – I Don’t Read Him Regularly, But I Hear That I Should
A riff on Yury Tsukerman’s observation about this blog: Sean Murphy– I don’t read him regularly, but I hear that I should.”
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Do Customer Development in Parallel with Product Development
It’s a good idea to do customer development in parallel with product development: talk to prospects, surveys are not enough.
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Early Customer Conversations: Use Appreciative Inquiry, Amplify Positive Deviance
Appreciative Inquiry offers a solid approach for early customer interviews.Ask, “What’s working and what problems do you have?”
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Lean Startups Panel at SVASE Oct 29 in SF
I will be taking part in an SVASE panel on the lean startup concept entitled “Lean Startups–Do They Really Work” on Thursday October 29 at Cooley Godward in San Francisco.
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Michael Schrage on Innovation, Collaboration, Tools, and Incentives
Michael Schrage offers some useful insights on innovation: he stresses the need for collaboration both within the startup (or new product team) and between the startup and its early customers.
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