Ask HN: Who is actually doing Customer Development?

[avk]

Founders, are you doing customer development? Why or why not?

For those who are, what have you found to be the most useful aspect of it? The hardest?

I ask because it seems like the HN and lean startup communities don't overlap that much and I'm curious why.

[timcederman]

What's interesting to me is that customer development (at least the early stages) is a more commercial-friendly form of participatory design.

I did a PhD in embedded computer systems design which described "realistic" methods for designing new products with small teams through intense engagement with your future users. This was in an academic setting though, and I'd been wondering how to "sell" the idea of participatory design in much the same way user-centred design had been to companies as an alternative to traditional design methods.

Then I read Steve Blank's customer development strategies. Beaten to the punch. So I'm curious - is Steve aware of PD? What inspired CD?

Anyway, to answer the OP - working as an external designer/developer for a small dental firm, I found that our approach, which was very similar to CD in a lot of ways, was very useful for learning what truly mattered to the customer. You are able to cut away the cruft from the design process very quickly. It's hard to tell what people want by watching them, it's hard to tell what they want by having them tell you, but it's easy when you collaborate with them in the design process.

The hardest part is it takes up a lot of time, but when you're establishing a toe-hold in the market, that's ok, and it's a differentiator for your company. We made a lot of people very happy by fulfilling their needs really well.

[petervandijck → timcederman]

I always felt participatory design was never worked out or explained as well as customer development.

They were definitely on to something, but the focus seemed wrong (have your customers help you design your product). Customer development's focus is straight on (have a hypothesis, test it with customers and pivot). Much stronger way of thinking about the process.

[fun2have → petervandijck]

I agree with you. Participatory design is not the same as testing a Hypothesis, which is what CD is about. The easiest way of thinking about it is what Henry Ford said "If had listened to my customers I would have bread faster horses". What Ford did was look at the Activities of his customers (need to go from a to b faster), and their needs and then came up with a Hypothesis which was the car.

He still researched the market, he still listened to his customers, but he did not use the customers solution, which is what Participatory design is about.

[timcederman → fun2have]

Participatory design is not about having your customer design for you, which is a common misconception. If it was, then every PD project would end up like the Homer Simpson car.

It is about engaging the user as an equal and not treating them as a abstract problem you are designing for. As I said, it's about including them in the design process in a way that you come up with a design that truly suits their needs.

[timcederman → petervandijck]

The main problem is that a lot of people see PD as a philosophy rather than a method. I tried to suggest concrete methods you could use PD to build better products. The research is here - http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~tch/

[gordonguthrie]

We are at hypernumbers.com

Our product makes it possible for normal users to build websites and applications via a spreadsheet paradigm.

What we are selling is control, convenience and lower cost.

I walk around with my iPhone and go into shops and small businesses, small offices, anywhere there are Excel users without technical support, and do my speil. Lines that work in person are rolled back into the web offering.

We want to sell direct on the web, but you get much more real and understandable feedback from direct selling, so as long as the people you are pitching to IRL are representative of your target web demographic, it works fine.

The key things is: * I have an opinion * things customers tell us are facts * things customers do are facts * what is the cheapest and quickest way to test my opinions and replace them with customer facts

It works well.

[robfitz]

It was important enough for us that we moved from SF to London to be closer to our customers.

The big mistake we kept making was starting to sell a product idea when we should have still been listening and understanding. Other mistakes were assuming validation from one customer segment would translate to others and not understanding the customer's budget and purchase approval process as early as we could have.

Even with those mistakes, the gains have been tremendous. I think the literal process in the book is overkill for most web businesses but I would never walk away from the principles.

[spokey]

I'm doing (or at least trying to do) customer development on a B2C startup.

Why? Because after a fair bit of product development experience (mostly agile, mostly outside of the startup world) many things about CD resonated strongly with me. For one quick example, the bits about listening to your customers but not necessarily doing what they say are handled with more insight and nuance than most methodologies. This (and Blank's resume) gave the process enough credibility to me for me to attempt to follow it.

I don't feel I'm far enough through the process to answer "the most useful aspect" part yet, although I think most of the core process that I've tried has been useful. CD is actually a pretty small process: It doesn't really that many steps, it just takes time and discipline to execute them.

The hardest parts for me so far have been

(a) getting really crisp on the problem/solution hypothesis

(b) approximating customer visits in a B2C environment

[petervandijck → spokey]

"the bits about listening to your customers but not necessarily doing what they say are handled with more insight and nuance than most methodologies"

Exactly. Most other methodologies are stuck in "listen to your customers, somewhat". Customer development says: "test your hypothesis and pivot". Resonates more with me too.

Too bad that the language they use is so markety.

[JarekS]

At Smartupz we are trying to do the lean model and customer development. It's much harder then it looks - first problem is that people you are trying to approach (in our case small/medium business) have no time. So you must be very clear in terms of your value proposition so they can immediately "get" your app and share their opinion.

Creating crisp/short value proposition statement is damn hard.

Second thing - throwing at people MVP or just a presentation with the proposed functionality works fantastic! We get tons of great feedback without actually having to write a single line of code. When we eventually start writing code - functionality is much more "down to earth" and customer is willing to test it because it's partially his baby.

cheers, Jarek.

[fun2have]

Our product webnographer.com is very much following Steve Blanks ideas of testing the Hypothesis. Webnographer is a online tool for remote usability testing. To start off we have been offering the tool combined with a consulting service, this has led us to to actually get very close to customers and understand their needs. From day one we have been charging customers, and therefore get rapid feedback if people will actually pay for it.

What is hard? All start ups are hard, but compared to the other start ups I have been involved in following the "customer development" mantra has been easier, because the feedback is faster and you can alter coarse faster. No business plan is ever going to be spot on, and no Hypothesis is either. Blanks ideas means that feedback is faster, and therefore risk is lowered, without reducing profitability. The more traditional seams like the waterfall method compared to agile.

[gosuri]

We launched a product recently http://sociaholic.com and applied lean startup principles.

Problem Hypothesis: The existing Twitter to Facebook integrations and apps don't preview links/videos when publishing to Facebook from Twitter, thus by limiting the desirability to click on a link on facebook pages.

Execution: Design to launch along with a video in less than 2 weeks, the goal was to validate our solution has a market. We update your facebook page from twitter in nice way (previewing links, converting @handles, etc)

Validation: Our first week: Over 200 active users out of ~250 signups, conversion rate (homepage to adding twitter account) ~30%. 2% dissatisfied customers (5 out 250 people uninstalled)

The product has a much bigger vision and Customer Development is doing wonders and we plan to do this for every step we move forward.

[bdickason → gosuri]

Great domain name btw.

[gosuri → bdickason]

Thank you.

[randall]

http://justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/videos/

Among those: Dropbox (yc alum), IMVU, Aardvark. Their videos are pretty enlightening.