Steve Blank, the pioneer of Customer Development released his new book called ‘The Startup Owners Manual’. Of particular note is the inclusion of the Customer Development Manifesto which fits nicely side by side with the Agile Manifesto for product development. I’ve summarised the 14 points below for quick reference.
- There are no facts inside your building, so get outside where future customers live and work.
- Pair Customer Development with agile development.
- Failure is an integral part of the search. If you are afraid to fail in a start-up then you are destined to do so.
- Make continuous iterations and pivots driven by the learning’s and insight from a continuous stream of “pass/fail” tests.
- No business plan survives first contact with customers so use a business model canvas.
- Design experiments and test in front of customers to validate your hypotheses.
- Not all start-ups are alike. Agree on market type. It changes everything
- Start-up metrics differ from those in existing companies. Focus on tracking the progress made converting guesses and hypotheses into facts, rather than execution of a static plan.
- Fast decision making, cycle time, speed and tempo. The biggest impediment to cycle time is psychological.
- A start-up without driven, passionate people is dead the day it opens. It’s all about passion.
- Start-up job titles are very different from large companies. Start-ups demand people who are comfortable with uncertainty, chaos and change.
- Preserve all cash while searching for the repeatable and scalable business model. Then spend.
- Communicate and share learning, even with outsiders.
- Customer development success begins with buy in from co-founders and everyone on the team before the company even starts.