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So I just started reading Steven Blank’s The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Aside from being excited about this book, I am a bit bummed that there is no Kindle edition. Not only bummed but also shocked.
It’s interesting how the startup journey is starting to become a couple dozen points of recognized patterns. I see this in Adeo Ressi’s Founder Institute and in Paul Graham’s yCombinator, and I think it’s a good thing. Although there are some sadists in the startup community who take the attitude ‘I had to learn the hard way, and so do you!’ it seems the majority of people who have come out the other side of a venture alive don’t want others to have to repeat the same mistakes they did.
When I was consulting full time, companies always wanted to know what the ‘recognized pattern’ was. In a lot of cases, I would tell them ‘I have seen this movie before, and this is how it ends…’ The funny part is that even though I was hired for my expertise in the industry and my perspective having worked with others in the same space, the client often *insisted* they were different and that the pattern didn’t apply to them. I wonder if startups have the same problem? I guess its a function of who their vcs/angels/advisors/board members are.
In my previous life, I worked in Product Lifecycle Management. Unfortunately, that is not as sexy as it sounds, although I did get a bird’s eye view of how a lot of companies operate at the nuts and bolts level and a fair amount of insight into the New Product/Service Introduction phase of big companies. I would implore my clients to please please please get this in front of a customer and take their pulse before you embark on a multi million dollar marketing campaign. Their response:
Them: ‘We don’t want to show this to the customer until its completely ready… otherwise they will freak out.
Me: How do you know they will freak out?
Them: We tried this before and thats what happened?
Me: When you tried it before, did you involve them in the process from day 1, or did you show them something out of being forced to because it was already late.
Them: No comment.
My point is that ongoing dialog with your customers lead to better products, and even if its an idea, the customer can guide you toward something that actually solves a problem for them and helping you understand what they are willing to pay for.
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