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Customer
Development
Paul Duffy, Leader WW Solutions Architecture, Startups

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“More startups from a lack of
customers than fail from a
failure of product
development.” – Steve Blank

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“The ability to learn faster than
your competitors may be the
only sustainable competitive
advantage.” – Cindy Alvarez

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“We must learn what customers
really want, not what they say
they want or what we think they
should want.” – Eric Ries

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A process for discovering and validating your
customers, market, and solution.

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The Learn-Build-Learn Cycle
Learn
Build

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No

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Customer Development

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The Learn-Build-Learn Cycle
Learn
Build

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Customer Development: Discovery
Starts before you build the solution
Customer
Validation
Customer
Discovery
Customer
Creation
Company
Building

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Customer Development: Discovery
Overlaps and informs product development
Customer development
Product development

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How

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Product Market Fit
Value Proposition + Customer Segment

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“There are no facts inside your building”

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Get out of the building.

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Customer
Development: Webvan

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Customer
Development: Juicero

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Customer
Development: Color

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Customer
Development:
Discovery

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Customer
Development:
Instagram

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Customer Development: Discovery

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Customer Development: Discovery
But be careful
Interviews

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Customer Development: Discovery
Pitfalls
• Finding the right people
• Asking the right questions
• Drawing the right insights
• Demoing before you interview
• Talking more than you listen

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Customer Development: Interviews
Do you like it?
Bad Question

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Customer Development: Interviews
Can you describe your
biggest challenge?
Good Question

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Customer Development: Interviews
Would you pay
for this?
Bad Question

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Customer Development: Interviews
What is this problem
costing you?
Good Question

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Customer Development: Interviews
Characteristics of Bad Questions
• Yes/no
• Fails the doting parent test
• Too vague
• You-centric instead of customer-centric

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Customer Development: Interviews
Characteristics of Bad Questions
• Yes/no
• Fails the doting parent test
• Too vague
• You-centric instead of customer-centric

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Customer Development: Interviews
Would this fix it?
Bad Question

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Customer Development: Interviews
Can you describe how do
you solve this currently?
Good Question

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Customer Development: Interviews
What do you wish
you could do?
Good Question

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Customer Development: Interviews
Who else should
I talk to?
The Kicker

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Customer Development: Discovery
Characteristics of Good Questions
• Work backwards from the customer’s problems
• Open-ended
• Elicit anecdotes
• Reveal pain points

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Customer Development: Interviews
What you’re trying to capture
• Either behavior or feedback, but not both at once
• The nature of the problem first
• Not what they want, but what they’re trying to solve
• Emotional responses—real criticism or real praise

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Customer Development: Interviews
Best Practices
• Teams of two
• One interview subject-–no focus groups
• Talk to buyers
• Listen more than you talk
• Talk to enough people to see trends
• Be opportunistic
• Capture everything

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Good questions produce insight, not just data

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Customer Development: Discovery
Other techniques
• Amazon: PRFAQ
• Adwords → Landing Pages
• Conference freeloading
• Paper prototyping
• Cold calling, cold emailing

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Customer Development: Interviews
Challenges
• It’s hard
• It’s often awkward
• If you’re an engineer, it may feel particularly unnatural
• Building is seductive, it feels like progress

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Customer Development: Discovery
Exit Criteria
• What are your customers top problems?
• How much would they pay to solve them?
• Does your product concept solve them?
• Do customers agree?
• Will they pay for your specific solution?

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Customer Development: Validation
Validation
Customer
Discovery
Customer
Validation

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Sidebar: Market Types
Understand:
• Market size
• Implementation obstacles
• Capital requirements
• Time to revenue
• Sales cycles

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Sidebar: Market Types

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Customer
Development:
Validation

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Customer Development: Challenges
Pitfalls
• Waiting for perfect information
• Amazon: Two way doors
• Not expecting to get things wrong initially
• Not changing quickly enough
• Treating it as a checkbox exercise

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Customer Development: Validation
Validation
Customer
Discovery
Customer
Validation

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Customer Development: Validation
Some Amazonian themes here:
• Customer obsession
• The Future Press Release, (aka, PRFAQ)
• Two way doors
• Launch and iterate

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Customer Development
The PRFAQ
• Write a max 1 page press release before building
• Back it with a FAQ to go deeper
• Clarity about the end goal
• Gets everyone on the same page
• Helps define the MVP

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Customer
Development:
Validation
Make
reversible
decisions
quickly.
At Amazon we call these
“two way door” decisions.

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“Make something people want.”
– Paul Graham

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Um… when do we get to build something?

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Links
Four Steps to the Epiphany, by Steve Blank
http://bit.ly/blank-book
The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries
http://bit.ly/ries-book
Lean Customer Development, by Cindy Alvarez
http://bit.ly/alvarez-book

58. Thank you!
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