Here are some nice videos about the concept:
http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2289
http://steveblank.com/2009/11/23/customer-development-past-present-future/
Lean before it was called ‘lean’
Our early BackupAgent practices were in fact complying to the important lessons of Steve and Eric. Here’s why:- During the early days we talked and talked and talked with a lot of potential customers, channel partners, influencers and friends about our idea. We still do so today. This matches one of their very important philosophies; the facts are outside the building.
- We had a ‘minimum viable product’ which we threw into the market place very soon. We rendered a lot of feedback and attracted serious attention by doing so. It even enabled us to convince investors.
- We pivoted. We pivoted a lot. We didn’t start out by selling a software platform to Internet Service Providers. To prove this, take a look at our very old website and one 6 months later, where we started to reach out to ISPs.
The missing frame of reference
This results in the question if we would be even more effective if we had any notion of Eric’s and Steve’s theories. While we were busy building our company, we frequently had very fundamental discussions on how we performed. We did suffer from some pitfalls, like these:- We hired and put fate in senior sales execs before we nailed the sales process by ourselves. We expected them to go out and sell, while it didn’t happen. It took off only after we ‘validated our customers’ and crafted a ‘sales roadmap’ combined with marketing efforts.
- We didn’t always pivot out of own vision and some of our features did end up in the product, because one customer or partner insisted on it. Thinking now: we should have showed them the door.