Excellent wisdom. I've been reading Four Steps to the Epiphany and find it pretty confusing, however. Somebody needs to turn it into a "How to find customers" manual and then write a companion "How to scale" manual.
I'm a big fan of Steve Blank. His blog is marvelous and his ideas are more relevant and experience-based than basically anything out there. We're lucky to have him. That being said, a rant has been building up in me for a long time and I don't think I can resist it any longer. What the hell was going on with that book?
First, the title makes it sound like a treatise on Christian mysticism. If you're such a great marketer, how come you can't name your own book? Second, I've never seen such bad editing (I am not exaggerating). If I were one of the people thanked for proofreading the book I would have either (a) asked for my name to be deleted or (b) done my job. Third, the book is as stilted and processy as his blog is lively and addictive: if your idea of fun is diagrams connecting step 3a with step 4c, dig in. It reminds me of those old photographs where (presumably) warm, funny people would get dressed up in uncomfortable Sunday suits and stare stiffly at the camera because they thought they were supposed to be serious. Fourth, the book doesn't connect its ideas with other work. This diminishes its value; it would be easier to understand if it pointed to other things and explained where it differs. Particularly useful would have been how it differs from Crossing the Chasm and the product-adoption lifecycle. As best as I can figure out, the main difference is that it focuses on how to acquire (paying) early adopters so that you have a chance of later hitting the mainstream. In other words, it's about reaching the chasm in the first place. (Hey, maybe that would have been a good title.) But even with something as basic as that, I'm left wondering if I'm getting it right.
As I said, I'm a big fan. :)
Edit: I mean that. This stuff is so important that I wish Blank would write a good book, in his own wonderful voice (as evidenced on the blog), to really get it across. I volunteer to proofread.
1. Agree with your comments. The text was never intended for a general audience.
2. The "book" is actually my class notes from the Customer Development class I teach at Haas.
3. Students started asking for hard copies of the notes. I sat on the board of Cafepress so as a favor, I bundled the notes together, slapped a cover on it and put it on the cafepress.com site
4. When Eric Ries took my class he pointed out that I could ship the copies to Amazon and that would give others broader access to it. Amazon wanted something more than "these are my class notes" as a description.
5. You can think of the book as a $39 ripoff for class notes, or a steep discount on the $30,000 Haas Business School tuition.
6. The book title was a pun on my last company, Epiphany
7. The web site is a running commentary on the origin of customer development, how the ideas evolved and what they mean
Oh man, now I feel bad for harshing on it. The something we got is infinitely better than the nothing that was its alternative. Thanks for taking the trouble to do the favor, and, uh, what can I say? I'll go home and re-read it.
Your post and Steve's response made me realize that Steve's book was basically a minimal viable product. Now that his buggy MVP has proved the market, he should follow up with an improved v2.0! :-)
Sometimes it's all about expectations. Perhaps a friendly Amazon reviewer could inform people about the nature of your book to set the appropriate expectations.
It's true, the frame makes all the difference. It's a book in the sense that it's a bound text, but not in the sense that I was using the word. Having adjusted the definition, the criticisms pretty much evaporate. Maybe I'll do penance by posting such a review.
I'll help you out with the proof-reading. It's bugged me so much as I've read 4 steps that now my copy has a bunch of red ink in it so it won't bug me the next time I read it.
On this subject -- Steve, how about putting your book on a wiki and letting the community edit / rewrite the book? I think there'd be easily enough interest.
I think it would be more useful to let a startup have a copy in a private wiki and rework it according to their specific needs. This would allow them to update and revise it for the specifics of a particular product and market, starting from a common template.
About those old photos. The reason for the serious look is that for a daguerreotype you needed to sit still for 15 minutes without moving or varying your expression. It is basically impossible to hold a fixed smile that long, so you had to look serious.
I completely agree, Four Steps seems interesting but I feel as though they gloss over how to do the parts that matter and describe in detail what you shouldn't do.
