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.
Do customers ask silly questions? Once worked on a service desk, or have read one of the many famous help desk stories, one must admit that this is true! But how is it possible that otherwise bright, thoughtful and intelligent people ask "silly" questions? Peter van Eijk wrote a very interesting article about Computer Human
Interaction (
I was positively surprised when I heard that we were nominated for the Channel Xcellence Awards for the second time in a row! After a very promising runner-up position last year, we are again nominated for the ‘Innovative Business Partner Award’. Next to that, we are also nominated in a new category ‘Economic Survivor Award’. I guess I don’t
have to explain why this is a new category.
Yesterday I arrived in Seattle for the 
A while ago I visited Washington DC to visit a potential partner, 
Since last week we have a new toy in our office. Well, the toy itself is nothing new, but it is new in our office. It’s a football table.
As support engineer I’m often the piggy in the middle, or “tussen de wal en het schip” as we say in Dutch. At one hand there is the Sales Department, who would like to see our product as if it were 
I would like to start this blog with a famous quote from Monty Python. For several years now, I have devoted my working life to online backup and as one of the founders of BackupAgent I got married to 
Yesterday I had a conversation with one of our reseller partners and he told me that he pitches our online backup product (branded as his own service) as an insurance. When he is selling the product to his customers he compares it with a car, health or property insurance. You pay a recurring fee for the service (insurance), but
you hope you’ll never need it. He even told his customers that remote backup will become a commodity, just like insurances. Who on earth would not insure his car or property these days? The same thing will happen to your digital data in a few years time.
