1Customer Development in the High-Tech Enterprise September 2008
MostStartups Fail from a Lack of customers
not Product Development Failure
@LSChallenge
My Lean Story
My Awesome Idea
The idea was simply to build a platform to let people trade their physical assets like their financial assets.
It involved building a large catalog, and letting people buy and sell their stuff like stocks
Product Wiki
User Portfolio
Automated Shipping
Scanned Item
Works like Netflix – seal and ship
Exhibit A
What I did first…
Of course… I went ahead and built it. It was groundbreaking.
• I found two co-founders
• Hired programmers
• Built it quietly
After 12 months
• Product was live!
• No CUSTOMERS….
• Found a competitor doing the exact same thing
• 14 Months In Development
What I learned…
• 14 months in development
• Lots of money invested
What I learned…
• 14 months in development
• Lots of money invested
• No Customers
What I learned…
• 14 months in development
• Lots of money invested
• No Customers
• Identical Competitor – that just Raised $5.3m from DFJ
What I learned…
• 14 months in development
• Lots of money invested
• No Customers
• Identical Competitor – that just Raised $5.3m from DFJ
DISASTER!!!
What I learned…
@LSChallenge
How Did This Happen?!
We didn’t iterate. We built.
We didn’t iterate. We built. We didn’t do CustDev. We Assumed
We didn’t iterate. We built. We didn’t do CustDev. We Assumed
We didn’t have a strategy when assumptions changed
We didn’t iterate. We built. We didn’t do CustDev. We Assumed
We didn’t have a strategy when assumptions changed
We did it all in secret
Learn to build something people want
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AwardsCeremony
• 4 week Lean Startup Competition• Experiment and iterate on your model each week• Receive feedback from mentors • Learn from awesome speakers• Get a chance to win up to $20,000 in cash and prizes
1 2 3 4LaunchWeekend
AwardsCeremony