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Filed under: 2 Minute Lessons, Business Model versus Business Plan, Customer Development, Lean LaunchPad, Teaching |
Validation: Be Sure Your Startup Vision Isn’t a Hallucination. 2 Minutes to See Why
Posted on July 3, 2014 by steve blank
Remember, this is already after market validation.
Thanks Steve. I always find your posts super helpful and informative. Thanks for taking the time
I have a little bit of apprehension here. B2B customers who make decisions will not give you so much time to go infront of them repeatedly if you are not adding value to them. How do you address that? Sometimes you just have one shot infront of them.
Pramod,
That’s a great question.
If you’ve done the previous step, Customer Discovery, you would know who to call on, in what order and what messages to use at each step in the organization. See the Startup Owners Manual and/or The Four Steps to the Epiphany
steve
I believe that doing due diligence on the company story in Phase 3 is difficult to do on your own. There’s always a danger that you can’t see the wood for the trees. I’ve helped several startups stand back as they reach this point and re-think their company story, often from scratch. The story has to answer the question “why should investors care”, not explain what they did. I see companies in the US developing a more open narrative, explaining their journey around this validation process. It makes for a much more authentic storyline. Once you share this with the better journalists, it creates a catalyst for a conversation, and that often leads to coverage in relevant media.
I’m concerned that many accelerators in Europe are becoming 90 day pitching factories, and just accelerating teams out of the top floor window hoping that at least a few have learned to fly.
Last year, Steve gave an excellent interview to Forbes in which he said he was worried about Demo Day – it needed fixing. I agree. http://criticaldistance.blogspot.nl/2013/12/rethinking-demo-day-for-2014.html. Did anything happen next?
Steve,
It was great hearing you speak last week at the Clean Tech Academy. Thank you for taking the time.
This is a great video, I especially like “simultaneously” developing a position. Done so by listening to your customers, sound advice.
Customers are what businesses are built on.
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