practicing customer development (for lean startup circle copenhagen)

Lean Customer DevelopmentCindy Alvarez

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YESNO

Let’s start with a hypothesis(guess)…

I believe [type of person]needs to solve [problem]which happens when [performing task].

time to pivot

What are your assumptions?• Motivations

• Current behaviors

• Ability to change

• Decision-making criteria

• Problem frequency

• Problem severity

So, where am I going to find customers…?

And why would random people be willing to talk to me?

Social psychology is on our side• Most customers are “unrecognized experts”

• We love to sound smart

• We love to be helpful

• We love to feel in control of our destiny (make things better in our lives)

People do not care about

• Your credentials

• Your personal history

• Your product (don’t sell me #@*%!)

My name is[name]and I’m trying to solve [problem]and I’d love to learn from you because[reason].Could you talk with me for 20 minutes?

Getting people to talk (a lot):• Thank you!

• I’m going to talk as little as possible

• Nothing you say will be boring

Getting people to talk (a lot):

• Tell me about the last time…

• 60 seconds of silence

• No “yes/no” questions

• Who / What / When / How / Why

But what if I ask the wrong questions?

Tell me about how you do _________ today…

Do you use any [tools/products/apps/tricks] to help you get ________ done?

Last time you did ___________, what were you doing right before you got started?

Once you finished, what did you do after?

If you could wave a magic wand and be able to do anything that you can’t do today, what would it be?

(Don’t worry about if it’s possible)

Is there anything else about _________ that I should have asked about?

Who do you know that I should also be talking with? Who else cares a lot/is affected by ______?

And then can I show them my product?

NO

I’ve learned so much from you!

I think we’ll have some ideas/prototype/demo ready in a week or two.

Can I get back in touch then and show you something?

OK, great. But what do I do with all these notes?

Making sense of what you hear:• Validates

• Invalidates

• Emotion

• Surprises

LiveCustomer DevelopmentAdviceTime!

Customer Development ‘Ask’ Templates:

http://bit.ly/16K4mhM

Customer Development Tools:

http://bit.ly/14a30PQ

(feel free to add to this!)

You can ask questions anytime!

cindy@cindyalvarez.com or @cindyalvarez