Lean Startups & Customer Development
First: a little bit of “Color”
Raised $41M without a product
“Color Looks To Reinvent Social Interaction With Its Mobile Photo
App” TechCrunch
“This is a potentially huge opportunity that will likely be worth
many billions if it works out.” Business Insider
“Color May Be The Next Twitter.” Readwrite.com
So what happened?
“An obscene, expensive pixel
farce”
“Nobody’s using the app”
“Epic flop”
Now, Instagram…
Started as ‘Burbn’,
but users were using it differently
Co-founders listened & tweaked
100K users in a few days
Sold to Facebook for $1 billion
Most startups fail because they fail to
find customers
Typical startup scenario
On the other hand…
Extremely simple file-sharing tool
Is file syncing a major problem?
Founders did a video: 75,000 sign ups
Currently valued at $4 billion
Does anyone actually need
your product?
Good product development but
Bad customer development
A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under
conditions of extreme uncertainty by Eric Ries
A startup is an organization formed to
search for a repeatable and scalable business model
by Steve Blank
A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under
conditions of extreme uncertainty by Eric Ries
A startup is an organization formed to
search for a repeatable and scalable business model
by Steve Blank
Nordstrom Innovation Lab (video)
You must get out of
the building
Lean Startup:
Build, Measure,
Learn.
(Repeat)
build
Minimum Viable Products and
Pivot until
Product/Market Fit.
At first we launched a crowdfunding platform; little did we know that the market was more interested in the ticket sales part. Walid Singer, Presella.com co-founder
What does Product/Market Fit look like?
Work with Early Adopters i.e. extreme users
Measuring Progress: Business Model Canvas
Customer Development in Action (video)
In summary: Admit your uncertainties
Methodically iterate to reduce them Seek validation from the real world
Stay lean until it clicks
And once it clicks,
raise $$
Insights
Thank You
