What does customer development teach us about successful startups?
All big hit unicorns delivered a unique value proposition in a small niche when they first started
The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors.
Peter Thiel, Zero to One
Examples
- Facebook was only accessible to Harvard students.
- Tesla sold high-end electric cars only to rich people in Silicon Valley.
- The Apple I was sold in PC hobbyist fairs.
Lesson
You need to do the same. Get a clear idea of what that market is by defining what an early adopter looks like: what he does, how he behaves, what he consumes and where you can find him.
Good feedback is implicit
Lesson
Understand who your customer is before getting any kind of feedback. Ask how is your product making his life better every day instead of searching for "emotional boosters" from people who will not buy your solution.
Customer Development is not asking customers what they want
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Henry Ford
Lesson
Customers try to solve problems with existing solutions. Good at suggesting improvements but terrible for thinking outside the box.
Go deeper with your questions until you get to the root cause of every need.
Testing for the sake of testing is not a good idea
Lesson
Develop a habit of constructing ideas as a set of hypothesis and be specific about how to test them using little or no resources.
That's why we at Pollenizer are building an App that allows you to take control of all of your experiments.
Smart investors love proof, not plans
Lesson
Get something out there as soon as possible and test results. A pitch sounds a million times better when you can prove you have happy users.
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