Learn Faster with Customer Development
KISSinsights Case Study Hiten Shah The Lean Startup SXSW • March 12th, 2011

Lean Startups are Built to
Learn

Customer Development • It’s all
about learning and discovery • Outlined by Steve Blank in Four Steps to the Epiphany Customer STOP Customer STOP Customer STOP Scale STOP Discovery Validation Creation Company Pivot

Original Hypothesis for KISSinsights “Our
hypothesis is that product manager type people have a problem doing fast/effective/frequent customer research.”

What we wanted to learn...
• What are they doing now? • What are other tools leaving on the table? • Who is involved? • How frequent / severe is the pain? • What else are customers complaining about?

How we learned • ~20
phone interviews (15 - 20 minutes each) • 3 in-person user tests with paper prototypes • 2 landing pages • Hacky MVP on KISSmetrics.com • 8 “alpha testers”

What we learned! • People
are not doing customer research. • They want private feedback and targeting. • It requires developer involvement. • It is a constant pain.

What we built. • A
freemium on-site customer feedback tool • That involves an easy one-time install • Which provides private customer feedback • And easy to understand reporting.

Customer Development Tips

Get out of the building!

Start with a Hypothesis Our
hypothesis is that product manager type people have a problem doing effective customer research Our hypothesis is that ________________________________ people have a problem doing _______________________

Talk about their problems, not
your solutions.

Find the severe pain

Test your riskiest assumptions first

Thank You!
@hnshah
hshah@kissmetrics.com