During my studies at NYU Stern, I had the pleasure of meeting and personally working with Steve Blank – serial entrepreneur with three billion dollar exits – through his Lean Startup Program to learn his customer development methodology. I cannot emphasize how invaluable that experience has been to me.
In his book The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Blank points out the pitfalls of a narrow emphasis on product development; and instead argues that startups should focus on what he called “customer development”, which emphasizes “learning about customers and their problems as early in the development process as possible”.
Blank’s customer development methodology proposed four steps:
1. Customer Discovery
Test your hypotheses about the nature of the problem, interest in the product or service solution, and business viability.
2. Customer Validation
Test the business viability through customer purchases and in the process creates a “sales road map”, a proven and repeatable sales process.
3. Customer Creation
Execute the business plan by scaling through customer acquisition, creating user demand and directing it toward the company’s sales channels.
4. Company Building
Formalize and standardize company departments and operations.
The lean startup method encourages you to get out of the building so you can establish a product-market fit though customer discovery and customer validation, as opposed to planning your venture in a vacuum to later on discover that it doesn’t quite meet your customer’s needs.
I implore every entrepreneur to seek out this book and the numerous resources online (articles, videos, etc.) about lean startup and customer discovery, so you can build a solid foundation for your new startup venture!
