This document discusses customer development and how to validate ideas with customers. It recommends: 1) Conducting customer development in parallel with product development to discover customers and their needs as the product develops. 2) Creating a small customer development team to identify early customers to provide feedback through experiments and minimum viable product (MVP) tests. 3) Using frameworks like value proposition design to document and experiment on customer hypotheses and solution hypotheses, validating or invalidating each.

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Customer Development
How to Understand, Empathize And Validate Ideas
With Your Customers
Created by: Jacob Nielson
Inspired by: Steve Blank, Marty Cagan & Alex
Osterwalder, et al

2. 2
“No facts exist inside the
building, only opinions.”
Steve Blank

3. WHAT IS CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT?
• The process of documenting,
experimenting and refining
your understanding of your
customer and their needs
• Throughout the process your
customer does not change
but your concept of who your
customer is in your mind
does
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4. CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT SHOULD HAPPEN IN
PARALLEL TO PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
The idea is to discover and develop a set of reference customers
in parallel with discovering and developing the product.
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Product Development
Customer Development
Getting
out of the
building
First Concept of
the Customer
Additional Insight
About Them
Breakthrough Insight Real Reference
Customer -
Earlyvangelist

5. CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
• Team of 3 to 5 people
– Product manager; engineering lead; designer or researcher
• Identify 6-8 Earlyvangelist Customers (B2B; 15-20 if B2C)
• Customer Benefits
– Get a great solution to their problems
– Early and significant product input
– Early access
• Discovery Team Benefits
– Users and Customers available for ongoing questions
– Available for on-site visits
– Agreement to deploy test version provide timely feedback
– Agreement to serve as reference, if happy with delivered product
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6. USE VALUE PROPOSITION DESIGN TO DOCUMENT AND
EXPERIMENT ON YOUR CUSTOMER HYPOTHESES
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Note: Pain killers only, no vitamins
CustomerProduct

7. 10 MIN EXERCISE: BRAINSTORM CUSTOMER PROFILES
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Customer Job, Pains & Gains
• Brainstorm your initial
concept of an Earlyvangelist
customer
• List
– Their job to be done
– Their pains
– Ways they achieve gains

8. USE EXPERIMENTS TO VALIDATE / INVALIDATE EACH
CUSTOMER HYPOTHESES
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Document your customer hypotheses, choose the valid/invalid
criteria, decide a procedure and document results
Validate or
Invalidate

9. 10 MIN EXERCISE: BRAINSTORM SOLUTIONS
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Products and Services
• Brainstorm your initial
concept of a solution for your
Earlyvangelist
• List
– The solution title
– Pain relievers
– Gain creators

10. USE EXPERIMENTS TO VALIDATE / INVALIDATE EACH
SOLUTION HYPOTHESES
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Document your solution hypotheses, choose the valid/invalid
criteria, decide a procedure and document results
Validate or
Invalidate

11. USE MVP TESTS TO VALIDATE PRODUCT IDEAS WITH
TARGET CUSTOMERS
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Problem: People are bad at predicting what they want. Saving Grace: People are good at reacting to things that exist
6 Main Test Types Include:
Landing Page Fake Door Video Testing
Concierge Testing Wizard of Oz Testing Prototypes (Low, Med, High Fidelity)

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10 MIN EXERCISE: DEVISE AN EXPERIMENT TO TEST
YOUR HYPOTHESIS
Video Testing
Validate or
Invalidate

13. IF THE FEEDBACK IS BELOW A 9 OR 10, DON’T TRUST IT
• When Testing Customer Pain
Hypotheses:
– Ask “On a scale of 0-10, how big of a
pain is this to you?”
• When Testing Solution
Hypotheses
– Ask “On a scale of 0-10, how likely
are you to purchase this solution?”
• Anything below a 9 or 10 isn’t
worth much
– If the solution is mediocre or the pain
mild/non-existent, most people will
tell you a mid-range number like 3-7
to be nice and not hurt your feelings
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9 or 10 8 & Below

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“You don’t get the answer from
any one user test, but every
test provides another piece of
the puzzle.”
Google