hiten shah, kissmetrics

Learn Faster with Customer DevelopmentKISSinsights Case Study

Hiten ShahThe Lean Startup SXSW • March 12th, 2011

Lean Startups are Built to Learn

• It’s all about learning and discovery

• Outlined by Steve Blank in Four Steps to the Epiphany

Customer Development

STOPCustomerDiscovery

STOPCustomerValidation

STOPCustomerCreation

STOPScale

Company

Pivot

Our hypothesis is that product manager type people have a problem doing fast/effective/frequent customer research.”

“

Original Hypothesis for KISSinsights

• What are they doing now?

• What are other tools leaving on the table?

• Who is involved?

• How frequent / severe is the pain?

• What else are customers complaining about?

What we wanted to learn...

• ~20 phone interviews (15 - 20 minutes each)

• 3 in-person user tests with paper prototypes

• 2 landing pages

• Hacky MVP on KISSmetrics.com

• 8 “alpha testers”

How we learned

What we learned!

• People are not doing customer research.

• They want private feedback and targeting.

• It requires developer involvement.

• It is a constant pain.

What we built.

• A freemium on-site customer feedback tool

• That involves an easy one-time install

• Which provides private customer feedback

• And easy to understand reporting.

Customer Development Tips

Get out of the building!

Our hypothesis is that ________________________________ people have a problem doing _______________________

Our hypothesis is that product manager typepeople have a problem doing effective customer research

Start with a Hypothesis

Talk about their problems, not your solutions.

Find the severe pain

Test your riskiest assumptions first

Thank You!

@hnshahhshah@kissmetrics.com