Very interesting deck on Customer Development

I don't usually write anything but the most brief comments here but this time, I'm going to put out some thoughts on a recent deck by Steve Blank on Customer Development. This terrific deck starts with a basic premise: More starups fail from a lack of customers than from a failure of product development. Those of us who've spent time with seed and early stage startups know for a fact that this is true.

But as Steve mentions, we have no processes to manage customer development. There are tons of resources available to manage the product development process, but the key driver of success, customers, is left out to dry.

He goes on to talk about the First Customer Ship (FCS) date as the goal for startups, which as we know from experience, is generally the case. but I totally agree with him when he says, "You don't know if you're wrong until you're out of business/money".

Download the deck and read his ideas on how to fix this serious problem. He's wise and its great advice.

http://www.stanford.edu/class/msande273/resources/Stanford%20steve%20101805.pdf