Investors often dismiss startups with the refrain, “That’s a feature, not a product.” I do the same. They usually mean that the feature, by itself, will not be adopted by consumers — the value proposition is too simple or narrow. But sometimes the feature is the product. Was Twitter a feature or a product? Google? [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Customer Development'
3 customer development case studies
November 22nd, 2009 · 2 Comments · Customer Development
If you’re trying to implement customer development at your startup, you’ll learn more from these 3 case studies than anything else I’ve seen. I consider each of these a “must-read”. I’ve quoted some great bits from each case study, but make sure you click through and read each one in full. 1. Using an LOI [...]
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The ignorant VC
November 20th, 2009 · Comments Off · Customer Development, Sponsor
Thanks to Atlas Venture for supporting Venture Hacks this month. This post is an interview of Fred Destin — one of Atlas’ general partners — by David Woodward, a journalist and blogger. If you like it, check out Fred’s blog and tweets @fdestin. A few days ago, I had an interesting chat with Fred Destin, [...]
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The sultans of startup marketing
November 19th, 2009 · 10 Comments · Customer Development, Resources
I recently re-connected with an up-and-coming venture capital Associate who thanked me for introducing her to the masterworks of Steve Blank and Eric Ries. I told her to check out Sean Ellis’ blog, and mentioned that I’ve learned just as much from Sean. Later that night, she sent me a note: “Sean Ellis is awesome. [...]
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Customer development by the book
November 2nd, 2009 · 1 Comment · Customer Development, Resources
Ash Maurya‘s new blog documents his journey through customer development. This is the most by-the-book application of customer development that I have ever seen. I am following this blog very closely; it’s thoughtful and well written. Some highlights: Is AdWords the right MVP for your product? “For Timothy Ferris, his MVP for testing new products that [...]
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Take our Twitter Survey
October 8th, 2009 · Comments Off · Customer Development, Survey, Twitter
We’re spending more and more timing posting original content and links on Twitter at twitter.com/venturehacks. For example: Once in a while, we post a summary of our tweets here on this blog — like this. Do you like our tweet summaries? Hate them? Want more? Want us to stop? We want your feedback. Click here [...]
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Customer Development Patterns
September 29th, 2009 · 3 Comments · Customer Development
Almost every startup with an unfinished application puts up a page like this: The customer development team at Grockit (Sean Ellis and Matt Johnson) takes a more interesting approach: Most startups just gather a list of email addresses. But Grockit measures the customer’s intent: “Why do you want to use our product?” Consider asking these [...]
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Steve Jobs does customer development: No new features
September 11th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Customer Development, Positioning
In Steve Jobs does customer development, I asked readers to find a customer development lesson in Steve’s interview. There were a lot of good responses that I didn’t anticipate. But Reece came closest to the answer I was looking for: “The subtler customer development point from Jobs is ‘We don’t need to add new stuff.’ [...]
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Steve Jobs does customer development
September 9th, 2009 · 17 Comments · Customer Development, Positioning
Steve Jobs is the ultimate visionary. He has a vision, he implements it, and the world pays him tens of billions of dollars for it. He doesn’t ask customers what they want because they would ask for a faster horse, not a car. He knows what customers want before the customers do. He is the [...]
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Customer Development, Class 5: IMVU
April 22nd, 2009 · Comments Off · Customer Development
Here’s the fifth class of Steve Blank‘s customer development course. Make sure you listen to Steve’s story about how he funded IMVU at time 27:50. Steve is a master of using theatre to extract compliance from customers, investors, you-name-it. This is wonderful material for entrepreneurs. I’ve already taken the class and I still subscribe to [...]
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