The entrepreneur's guide to customer development

What Hacker News says

1. badclientMar 2012
   I'd start with Nail it, Then Scale It.

   Specifically for customer development, I'd check out The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany.

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2. hshahMar 2012
   I'd recommend checking out The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development: http://custdev.com - It's a very practical guide to the first part of customer development and complimentary to Steve Blank's book and Eric Ries's Lean Startup Principles. I recommend it to every entrepreneur that I talk to (which ends up being hundreds a year!)
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3. wpietriSep 2011
   > Every viable web startup idea that I can think of has already been done by other startups who have been there many years before.

   You aren't looking hard enough. At work, about once a week we come up with another perfectly viable startup idea. We're already working on one, though, so we file those away just in case.

   You're probably looking in the wrong place. You could be mainly looking at existing companies, which of course means you won't think of anything new. Or you could be paying attention mainly to the obvious parts of yourself. But since people like us make startups, the obvious things we need are already covered.

   Instead, go look at other people. Really look. Be an anthropologist at the ballpark, a psychologist at the coffee shop, a sociologist at the grocery store, a short-story writer at the bar. Look at the problems people really have and ask: could I build something that would help?

   If you think the answer is yes, go pick up something like "The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development", or go do a Lean Startup Machine weekend. Learn how to test your ideas before you write code. When you find an idea you can't kill without building it (and find it you will) then go build it.

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4. jayliewSep 2011
   In my haste, forgot to mention other key resources in my "toolkit":

   * Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development http://custdev.com (cheat sheet to Steve Blank's book)

   * Highly recommend Lean Startup Machine to get hands on practice with the guidance of lean startup mentors! http://theleanstartupmachine.com

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5. acconradJan 2011
   If you want an even quicker read, as 4 Steps can be quite redundant (or not relating to your business), check out The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development:

   http://www.custdev.com/

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6. lfittlDec 2010
   Highly recommended: http://www.custdev.com/

   (E-)book that summarizes the 4 Steps into a usable reference guide, with case studies mixed in.

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