Comments on: Steve Jobs does customer development

By: Put down the compiler until you learn why they’re not buying. » Checkbox Blog - Checkbox Survey Solutions, Inc.

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:17:19 +0000

[...] close to the vest. However, it’s completely untrue. See the Venture-Hacks blog quoting Steve Jobs on the matter; then see their roadmap for collecting customer feedback and using it for [...]

By: Ryan Graves

Ryan Graves — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:26:23 +0000

“You don’t know what you’ve got here”

Jobs admits that his company builds amazing products but doesn’t really know what direction the market will take them until he sits and listens to customer feedback.

He’s not a god, he’s just a good listener.

By: chris

chris — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:20:47 +0000

I think the subtler point about customer development that Jobs made was in this quote”

“Originally, we weren’t exactly sure how to market the Touch.”

Even Jobs and the Apple team realized the fact that they don’t know how to correctly market something before customers start interacting with the product. Knowing and stating that, you don’t know, even as a major brand with hundred of successful products is a pretty powerful insight to me.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:03:17 +0000

Here is the subtle point that I see.

The quote overall implies that the Touch is being positioned in a new market as a way to access the App Store. Adding a camera would lead to confusion about what the Touch really is about and make educating prospective customers that much more difficult.

When Steve says “We don’t need to add new stuff — we need to get the price down where everyone can afford it.”, he is indicating that they have moved out of the iterative process of discovery and validation, and into the customer creation step where the focus is on ramping sales, and “crossing the chasm” to the mass market now that they know how to position, explain and sell the Touch in a clear and focused way.

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 02:20:38 +0000

“Originally, we weren’t exactly sure how to market the touch.” They didn’t know exactly how to position it but put it out there anyway.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:59:37 +0000

His subtle comment is that it is the cheapest way to the app store, implying there will be a much more expensive way to the app store. They also had to drive the price down for all touches to leave a gap between a touch and any tablet that will ultimately come out and be based on the app store.

By: Nalini Kumar Muppala

Nalini Kumar Muppala — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:33:12 +0000

“lowest-cost way to the App Store.”
– Once you are in the store and start using free samples, you are likely to pay for some apps hoping for better user experience.
– Once you get a hang of the eco-system, you are likely to opt for a faster model and upgrade.

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:04:31 +0000

Thought-provoking post! My guess at the second point is this:

Apple had hypothesis A & B, but collected ‘open’ customer feedback, rather than asking them ‘is this A or B to you?’. The answer was ‘C’.

By: Ed Anuff

Ed Anuff — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:35:43 +0000

These phrases stand out; “games were free”, “lowest-cost”, “reducing the price”, “get the price down”. These are not attributes that Jobs has historically emphasized and reflect new insights that Apple has into the price elasticity of this class of product.

By: Ryan Waggoner

Ryan Waggoner — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:07:26 +0000

“You don’t know what you’ve got.”

That’s it, right there. Far too many awesome products have withered and died because the “visionary founder” had a big success on their hands, but didn’t want to admit that it was a different success than the one they thought it was. A good example is Flickr, which as many people know was originally an online game, but users kept focusing more on the sideline functionality of sharing photos easily, until eventually Flickr saw the light and changed their strategy to meet their market, rather than trying to change their market to fit their vision.

Much of Jobs’ brilliance is that he does the former while making people think it’s the latter. He’s not really creating demand, he’s just meeting demand that’s so latent that you didn’t really know you had it, so it *seems* like he’s creating demand.