Comments on: Customer Development is Not a Focus Group

By: Want to Start a Business in Brazil? A Guide to Brazilian Startup Events & Environment - BRIC Expansion Blog

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:47:21 +0000

[...] Validate Need for Minimum Viable Product (MVP) – For more visit Steve Blank’s blog. [...]

By: steveblank

steveblank — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 06:00:55 +0000

Mark,
You’ve just listed the reasons why startups are not done by accountants with spreadsheets. It’s an art.

Customer Development is not a giant focus group. At best it is a way to inform an entrepreneurs instinct and reduce risk.

steve

By: Leon Talbot

Leon Talbot — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 03:11:25 +0000

Mark, I was thinking the same :
What does CustDev does for “situations where no one realizes they have a problem e.g. Henry Ford’s alleged ‘if I listened to what people wanted I would have built a faster horse’ ”
Thanks to Brent and Deena for underlining it !

By: Deena

Deena — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 03:27:47 +0000

Mark – thanks for the awesome summary of the grey areas with customer development. I hope Steve takes some time to either address these or outline some additional limitations to customer development and where it may or may not be practical.

By: Vijay Thirumalai

Vijay Thirumalai — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:15:53 +0000

Steve,
I’m a little behind in discovering your site and philosophy. Great work. I have a question about the product/market fit and MVP. I’m currently developing a widget product for e-retailers to make shopping social. I have two customers given the nature of the product. One-the retailers who presumably will pay later:) and secondly the consumers who come and visit the site who use the product. I have proceeded in attempting to find customer/product fit for both of them and it quickly becomes a 2 dimensional matrix losing all lean philosophy with it. In your experience how have you attempted to solve this?

By: bits and pieces » Blog Archive » infographics

bits and pieces » Blog Archive » infographics — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 02:37:38 +0000

[...] this article about minimum viable product is a great read for [...]

By: steveblank

steveblank — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:59:24 +0000

Paul,
Hmm… never thought of it that way.
To me in a startup it’s the founders that decide where on the graph they will be searching.
A focus group limits the graph to be searched where existing customers needs are.

steve

By: Paul Grayson

Paul Grayson — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:53:28 +0000

I’m a couple of months late discovering this site/post, anyway, excellent stuff.

Is this kind of like having a curve (the founders hypothesis) and then trying to find points (customers) that fit/approximate the curve; add more points and repeat; adjust curve slightly and repeat…

Whereas a focus group is like having a set of points and attempting to do a dot to dot.

By: Lean Startup Customer Discovery & the Value of First Impressions

Lean Startup Customer Discovery & the Value of First Impressions — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:12:35 +0000

[...] like to explore this more so we’ve taken the core pillars of customer discovery and development and designed our own customer discovery initiative. We’re calling it the Visionary Members [...]

By: Manual da Startup » Blog Archive » O MVP: a ferramenta de experimentação e aprendizado da Startup - Conceitos e práticas sobre Lean Startups e empreendedorismo em geral

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:08:58 +0000

[...] gerais para o produto, mas sim provar a visão inicial do empreendedor. Parafraseando Steve Blank, Customer Development não é um Focus Group. Segundo, além de testar a utilização do produto e suas features, o MVP também serve [...]

By: Treat Your Customers Like Children (or your Children like Customers) | Market By Numbers | Marketing Help

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:02:33 +0000

[...] reminds us that Customer Development is not just collecting web metrics and it’s not about focus groups. I’ve written before that Customer’s own the pain, Founders own the vision, meaning that [...]

By: My take on Customer Development and the Lean Startup | Recess Mobile Blog

My take on Customer Development and the Lean Startup | Recess Mobile Blog — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 13:29:33 +0000

[...] is not a focus group: Customer Development is about Testing the Founder’s Hypothesis Any idiot can get outside the [...]

By: Brent

Brent — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 04:50:55 +0000

Mark, you hit the nail on the head. I was thinking along the same lines and would love to hear Mr. Blank’s opinions regarding these situations.

By: Yuri Ammosov

Yuri Ammosov — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:28:54 +0000

Hmmm. OK, customer development is NOT a focus group. Then WHAT it IS?

By: Priyanka D

Priyanka D — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 06:12:44 +0000

in the beginning times for a startup it would be a little difficult I think to figure exactly out which customers we should be going for..

By: chrisryland

chrisryland — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:19:51 +0000

Not sure you did the wrong thing here–if you’re trying to get project commitments, you really had to support both-endian. And in the end the hardware difference is pretty minor.

That pretty much kills binary compatibility, however, which probably didn’t matter back then, because there were really no operating system ABIs.

By: SV New Tech Meetup « startupSQUARE's blog

SV New Tech Meetup « startupSQUARE's blog — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 08:42:48 +0000

[...] bands take their built in audience and then branch into their own material. Huh…sounds like customer validation to [...]

By: Top Posts « WordPress.com

Top Posts « WordPress.com — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:22:50 +0000

[...] Customer Development is Not a Focus Group On first description, hearing the “get out of the building and talk to customers” precept of Customer Development [...] [...]

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:03:41 +0000

I really enjoy the approach here. I’m a designer. Problem solving is at the heart of what I do.

I feel kind of douchey quoting Einstein here but it’s appropriate. He once said, “If I had 20 days to solve a problem I would take 19 days to define it”. I couldn’t agree more. I think defining the problem is more important than designing the solution. Without a good understanding of the problem you’re left to make subjective choices that could have &#@!-storm effect on those who end up building the solution, supporting it and using it. No bueno!

Products and services that find traction in the marketplace either feed a need-state very well, ride an unmistakable trend (but a far 2nd) or fall in the “hits-driven” (ex. movies) category. Entrepreneurs with vision essentially make a hypothesis, as Steve says, to fill a need state… and new products and services are born.

The “founders hypothesis” approach reminds me of experiences I’ve had creating and maintaining brands, particularly when trying to articulate value propositions, mission statements or truelines. Only from a solid understanding of the founders reason (hypothesis) for creating the business are these things born. If expressed well they become the motivation that helps employees align their ideas and goals with the organizations reason for being or the customers reason for using the product or service. The outcome of this is work that always adds value to the product or service.

Based on a clear need-state and hypothesis, I wonder what Steve’s example company’s value proposition or trueline would have been and if it would have aligned itself with their end solution?

By: Knowtu » links for 2009-11-30

Knowtu » links for 2009-11-30 — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:08:34 +0000

[...] Customer Development is Not a Focus Group « Steve Blank (tags: entrepreneurship startups) [...]