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Sometimes startups come to me with this problem: we have created this great service, how can we get our first customers.

Those startups quite often need to put a hold on product development and focus customer development.

What they don’t actually know is:
– are they addressing a real, existing problem or a burning need?
– does their service or product actually solve the problem?

Answering those questions with genuine insight from real people is what customer development is.

Here is how to do it.

Find 10 potential customers from the target group and understand if the problem you are solving is a big pain or they don’t really care.

For each customer understand where they stand:

1. Did they have the problem?
2. Did they know they have the problem?
3. Did they look for a solution?
4. Did they hack a solution?
5. Did they pay for a solution?

Achtung! Don’t ask them those questions. Have a conversation – not an interview – about the problem you are trying to solve and understand how they are solving it today. At the end, categorize them into the buckets above.

Once this is clear, the question is, how do I find those 10 potential customers?
Be creative, try different methods. Whichever method works best can later become one of your marketing/communication channel. Drop the one that doesn’t work. If you can’t find those first 10 customers, how are going to find 100s of them?

If your product solves the problem, the people that you identified as paying for a solution (the last bucket) are your potential customers. You can start selling it to them.

The book Lean Startup by Eric Ries has transformed entrepreneurship and innovation.

Eric Ries, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, learns from the failures and successes of the startups. He extracts the fundamental principles that enable startups to succeed. By naming them and codifying them, their principles become tangible, comprehensible and transmissible.

Specifically, the Lean Startup explains how to think of its product with the minimum of functionality to avoid constructing an unnecessary product, and how, starting from this point of departure, iterates quickly: that is to construct and test new functionalities to understand what customers really use.

Lean Startup transposes the concepts of lean management to the context of extreme uncertainty in which a startup is found. In a process of innovation, where is waste? How to make continuous improvement and be sure that one focuses its efforts on creating value for the customer? The Lean Startup takes its meaning when you try to find out what you need to build to meet the needs of your customers.

For entrepreneurs, the Lean Startup is a scientific approach and practical tools to develop their project.

For product and marketing managers of large companies, the Lean Startup allows to design and test new offers, with concrete data from the field.

In his book, Eric exemplifies his principles by personally experienced examples, but also by other companies in Silicon Valley.

This book has now become a reference; at the origin of a real movement of background in the world of business. The Lean Startup approach has transformed several companies by making them faster, agile and customer-centric, such as General Electric through its FastWorks program.

Eric Ries enters the Top Thinker 50 in 2015 alongside Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen.

Here are 5 selected quotes from Eric Ries to capture the ideas behind the concept of Lean Startup. These quotations are extracted from the book, “The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses“.

Success is not delivering a feature. Success is learning how to solve the customer’s problem.

It is celebrated when a feature comes out because it represents the work of a team. But it’s not that the customer will use it. Understand if it brings a solution to the customer’s problem, it’s a celebration.

The only way to succeed is to learn faster than others.

A successful startup when she found a business model that allows her to create, deliver and capture value to these customers. To find this business model, you must search, explore and learn what works and what does not. The faster you learn, the more likely you are to find this business model. And so … the only way to succeed and learn faster than others.

If you can not plant yourself, you can not learn.

To learn what works, you must try what does not work. To be deceived, again and again until improving with each attempt, one arrives what works. This learning is at the heart of the Lean Startup model.

Good design is one that changes for the better the behavior of customers.

Faced with a design we very quickly have options and preferences. We like it or not. But the only truth is that of the client and his behaviour. Does this new design, the behaviour of customers. This is tested on the internet simply with A / B tests.

If in doubt, simplify.

What else?

I recommend reading the full book, available at Amazon.