Customer Development 3: Introduction

This document discusses customer development as an important parallel process to product development for startups. It argues that startups often fail because they focus on product development without adequately engaging customers. The document introduces customer development as a process involving customer discovery, customer validation, and customer creation that should be synchronized with and guide product development. It emphasizes the importance of learning from customers over linear execution and achieving customer-centric milestones rather than focusing on the first customer ship date.