A curated list of customer development resources (40+) 📖 [updated: Jul 2022]

Once, I was the guy who thought ‘if I build this, they will come’. And of course, they didn’t. Don’t make the same mistake, read this.

8 min readMar 15, 2018

Customer development. I love it. Finding out what works and what not is super important and often overlooked by entrepreneurs who what to ship asap. I too want to ship asap, but I also want to ship stuff that is actually going to be used by people. That’s what customer development is for.

Note 1: this is a work in progress. I’ll keep adding resources to it. If you want to be kept in the loop of updates, please sign up for our newsletter.

Note 2: this is not the whole story. The resources below are primarily focussed on customer discovery and validation. To me, those are the most exciting phases of custdev.

I grouped the resources in the following sections:

Introduction to Customer Development
Experiments — Experiment types
Experiments — Finding customers to interview
Experiments — Interviewing techniques
Experiments — Success criteria & metrics
Customer Development Stories
Customer Development Tools
Customer Development Books

Do you have a resource that really needs to be listed here? Send me an email at b.wenneker@gmail.com.

Introduction to Customer Development

Steve Blank first wrote about customer development, but there are lots of others who wrote about this subject later on. These resources are here to get you started.

What is customer development? by Brant Cooper. A lean and mean explanation of custdev. Nothing more, nothing less.
Video 📽: Do you have a market? — Sharing Research Experiences by Gab Goldenberg. Nice video about what to do when you have an idea.
Video 📽: Steve Blank’s Customer Discovery Checklist by steve blank. A nice introduction to customer discovery with a series of short videos.
Video 📽: Lean LaunchPad Customer Discovery videos by steve blank. 37 videos on customer discovery by Steve Blank himself.
Test your value proposition: supercharge Lean Startup and custdev principles by Alexander Osterwalder. Helpful article explaining the role of the value proposition canvas (VPC) and business model canvas (BMC). Do check out the next blog by Ash Maurya, introducing the Lean Canvas.
Why Lean Canvas vs Business Model Canvas? by Ash Maurya. The Lean Canvas is inspired by the BMC but in my opinion better suitable for startups and customer development.
Lean Startup Customer Development Process, Evaluation Frameworks, and Lessons Learned by Bryan Hackett. Presentation showing several approaches to customer development.
Don’t waste your time on latent needs by Erik van der Pluijm. Erik explains how to find real problems to solve instead of latent needs.
Become a customer centric product manager with this single rule! by Thomas Hartmann. This article aims to help you decide which customer feedback to consider and which one to filter out.
How to run Experiments for Startup Idea Validation by Erik van der Pluijm. Practical guide on how to move from idea to a validated problem and solution.
How to reframe a solution into a problem statement by Nikki Anderson

Experiments

Experimenting is at the heart of customer discovery. These resources will show you which experiments have been used in the past.

Interviewing is one of the most popular experiment types around because it is cheap and you can get amazing results quickly. So I give special attention to this type of experiment

Experiment types

The Real Startup Book by Tristan Kromer. Tristan bundled all kinds of resources and background information about experimenting. A must read if you ask me.
Experiment Examples To Get You Started Testing Your Idea by Robbert van Geldrop. Experiments come in many forms and shapes, Robbert categorized a few as an inspiration for your startup.
How to charge money for things that don’t exist yet by Steli Efti. About why you should first sell your product and then build it, instead of the other way around.
Landing Page Tests Aren’t Useful for Validation by Giff Constable. Giff’s view on how different experiment techniques can be used for different goals. Also writes ‘You can invalidate an idea with customer development, but you cannot validate it.’ I love it.
Startup Experiment Design by Robbert van Geldrop. A lengthy guide for designing experiments, different experiment types and more about Lean Startup in general.
Completely Useless Online Surveys by Trevor Owens. About the incorrect use of online surveys and why conversations are better.
Idea Valuation Playbooks by learningloop. An overview of 80+ experiment types, with details how to run, categorized by validation type (problem, market, product & willingness to pay).

Finding customers to interview

Ok, finding people to learn from is not always easy. Check out these ‘hacks’ to get you up to speed.

3 (+1) Ways to Request and Get a Face-to-Face Meeting by Cindy Alvarez. 4 tips to get face-to-face meetings, can be used for cold calling, emails and in (networking) events.
95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale by Jason Evanish. A great resource for finding customers to talk to. It’s a bit outdated, but most ways are still very usable.
Using mTurk to interview 100 customers (in 4 hours) by Justin Wilcox. Justin coined the idea to use mturk to do lots of interviews fast. An original idea worth exploring!
How to send cold emails by Justin Wilcox. I personally have never got good results with emailing people (for B2B custdev), but you could try if you don’t have any other options.
10 Signs You’re Targeting the Right Customers (or Not) by Etienne Garbugli. The title says it all. A great reference article.

Interviewing techniques

Interviewing looks easy but it is not. Interviewing is an art. Interviewing must be mastered. Read these and you’ll have a great starting point.

How to Interview your Customers by Justin Wilcox. One of the best articles explaining how to interview customers. A must read if you ask me. I send this resource to relations all the time as an introduction to customer interviewing.
Tips for B2B Customer Development Interviews by Sean Murphy. Tips and lots of links to other articles about B2B custdev interviews.
The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions by Mike Fishbein. If you don’t have the time to read books like The Mom Test (see the books section), read this to get some inspiration for questions to ask.
Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes by Kevin Dewalt. Some questions you shouldn’t ask during custdev interviews.
How to test pricing during customer discovery by Matt Foley. Some questions you could ask to test pricing.
How to Structure (and get the most out of) Customer Development Interviews by Jason Evanish. Jason explains how he structures interviews. Nice reference material.
What’s the best cold calling script you’ve found success with when setting up customer interviews? Quora question. Some nice scripts that might help you out with cold calling.
12 tips for early customer development interviews and 11 Customer Development Anti-Patterns by Giff Constable. Tips I review every time I’m preparing for interviews. Must read.
10 alternative ways to ask: Would you buy this? by Daria Nepriakhina. People can only be certain about the past, so how can we find out if someone will buy.
What You Should Never Ask Your Customers by David Bailey. Talking to people before starting a business is common wisdom. But make sure you know which questions to ask and which not.
A startup CEO’s guide to user interviews that produce real product learnings by Darja Gutnick. Learn about the 3 lessons to keep in mind when interviewing your customers.
Preparing a Discovery Template for Customer Interviews by Nick Noreña. Part 1 focuses on what you can do before and during a customer interview to make life easier for yourself after the conversation is done. In Part 2, I will focus on finding patterns in the data you have collected.

Success Criteria & Metrics

These articles are primarily about how to interpret experiment results.

Success Metric vs. Fail Condition — To the Pain! by Tristan Kromer. Setting the success metric seems easy, but be aware of edge cases.
Startup Metrics 4 Pirates by Dave McClure. Ok, maybe I’m cheating by adding this one to the list but the metrics are really useful in a variety of situations. This is a funny and a very early (maybe the first?) explanation of the Pirate Metrics.
When do I *stop* doing customer interviews and start writing code? by Jason Cohen. The title says it all.
When are you Done Interviewing Customers? by Justin Wilcox. Need I say more?
3 Times You Should Ignore Your Customers by Kelly Fitzsimmons. Sometimes, the mantra “listen to your customers” can be downright detrimental. Not all customers are created equal. Opinions are cheap. Behaviors are where the real insights lie.

Customer Development war stories

Some cool war stories from customer development legends which can be quite helpful if you’re stuck.

Customer Development: Fight or Flight by Tristan Kromer. A story about a question you should ask yourself: Why do you want to start a business?
Ardent 2: Get Out of My Building by steve blank. A story of a young Steve about how he learned about understanding customers and product/market fit the hard way.
What I Learned Talking to 500 Customers in 4 Weeks by Alex Turnbull. A story by the CEO of Groove about his learnings doing custdev.
7 reasons why people skip customer interviews while they shouldn’t by Bas Wenneker. Funny and insightful article about why customer interviews are important and reason why people choose not to do the work. Great author btw 😆

Tools

The Javelin experiment board by Ywan van Loon. The Experiment Board is a great tool to structure experiments and interpret the results. It was developed by Javelin.com. Here’s a great introduction video by Grace Ng as well. A life saver for me.
ConfirmKit. Haven’t tried this one out but a friend from IndieHackers pointed me on this one. I would love to hear your experiences with this tool.
Scanvas by Aimforthemoon. A canvas that helps (corporate) startups to find your early adopter and problem to solve.
Find Better Problems Worth Solving with the Customer Forces Canvas by Ash Maurya. The second version of his Problem Interview script supported by the Customer Forces Canvas. Shows you how to structure your problem interviews as well.
More to come soon!

Books

The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. This actually was the first book I read about interviewing. Great resource, gets you up to speed with interviewing in no time!
Talking To Humans (free) by Giff Constable. A book to help people learn how to talk to their real or potential customer.
Running Lean by Ash Maurya. “Running Lean is a repeatable, actionable process for building products”. It is a good practical book on using the Lean Strategy method for startups.
The Corporate Startup by Tendayi Viki, Dan Toma and Esther Gons. How established companies can develop successful innovation ecosystems.
Testing Business Ideas by Alex Osterwalder and David J Bland. Like the cover says: “A field guide for rapid experimentation”. It contains 44 illustrated experiments.
More to come soon!