customer discovery techstars seattle 2017.01.25
TRANSCRIPT
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Customer DiscoveryDave Parker
@DaveParkerSEA
www.dkparker.com/blog
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Agenda
About Dave Customer Discovery
What to do What not to do
+5 Hypotheses Iterations/Pivots Q&A – Your questions
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Where to start?
You have opinionsYou have Data You get money!
Investors have opinionsThey have money
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You are not Henry Ford
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Customer Discovery Goals
Acute focus on problem – not product Find out if customers care? What do they want? Determines the difference your product at launch and
at scale Feature priorities & Product Roadmap Market Timing – see Bill Gross Ted Talk
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Customer Development Steve Blank – Four Steps to the Epiphany
Customer Discovery Customer Validation Customer Creation Company Building
Eric Reis – Lean Startup Learn - Ideas Build – Code Measure – Data
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What To Do
YOU get out of the building and interview prospects (they aren’t customers until they use or pay) 50 B2B interviews 100 B2C
Standard set of questions Google form – you fill it in
1) Face to face 2) Skype or hangout Watch
Ask the next question – Five Whys?
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What Not To Do
You are not the customer Don’t tolerate a small sample set – this could delay
your success by Years Avoid “Selection Bias”
“Isn’t our product amazing”
No rhetorical questions No blind surveys Can’t outsource
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What do you want to know?
Negatives If you have a fatal flaw in
your assumptions – when do you want to know?
If it was to fail why would it fail?
Positive Do they really want it
Pain Pill Vitamin
What will they pay
¯\_(ツ )_/¯
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Tooth Brush Test
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+5 Hypotheses
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What can you test?
Price Sales Model Hypothesis – how will you sell it? Demand Hypothesis – is anyone looking Business Model Hypothesis – how will you make money Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) /Life Time Value (LTV)
Hypothesis
All of these are required for your forecast
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Price
Value based pricing vs. cost base pricing Monthly Recurring Revenue Packaging 90% startups start too low
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Sales Model Hypothesis Known Market
Unknown Market
Low Price Point
High PricePoint
Known Search Words
Unknown Search words
Web Direct ✔ ✔ ✔
Direct ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Indirect ✔ ✔ ✔
Licensing ✔ ✔
Retail
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Demand Hypothesis
Is anyone looking for what you are doing Key word/phrases
SEO – long time to build SEM
AdWords Key Word Planner Display Ads
This gives you top of funnel/marketing spend
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Business Model Hypothesis
B2B 9 Model Market Metric
B2C 10 Models Market Metrics
http://dkparker.com/businessmodels/
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Customer Acquisition Hypothesis
The following apply regardless of models Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC) Lifetime value of Customer (LTV)
36 month calculation in a mature business, 12 months for you
Time to close sale How does this change with product/market
maturity? Churn/Retention Word of mouth vs. Virality
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Iterations & Pivots
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Iterations and Pivots
Iterations Features
Target customers
Pricing
Pivots Are painful – Tires to
Airplanes
Mike Maples – Thunder Lizards
Five Famous Pivots Odeo become Twitter
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Repeat after me…
I’m an entrepreneur Half my ideas are amazing Half are crap We need to find out which one this is!
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Q&A – Your Questions
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[email protected] www.dkparker.com @DaveParkerSEA