Yes there is a way to "develop" your customers

Transmission #20 from Jupiter Dispatch

Nov 28, 2024

`Time: 5.20 Minutes`

Okay let’s face “how to build a business”, straight in the eye…

You need a problem, a solution and paying customers to call yourself a real business owner.

Of course you can do wrong on any of these three core things of a working business. But more often than not, the most critical part is making the money.

Getting f*cking paying customers.

But why so many out there struggle so hard at this point?

That explains maybe also why there so many diverse advise givers out there, which try to raise our attention.

So let’s get into it.

Looking up many different of these so called “startup manuals”, makes one thing clear, that most people just repeat the same tricks.

Often a good sign if all address the same way. Only the results are not in line with this. Otherwise we would have more successful startups and not 80% out of business after 5 years.

So maybe there is something left in startup education which causes this problem. Maybe the paying customers are not in the right focus of all this manuals.

At least that’s my guess.

So let’s think it trough. If you look up most of these manuals, you will find a lot about problem and how to build a solution. (a working product)

But you often won’t find something more about customers than early users or ICPs. However there have to be more.

That’s where Customer Development comes in.

A hard to produce art to validate, iterate and getting your first paying users. And it’s important to do this simultaneously to problem and solution building.

Here’s a great slide from infamous “Lean Startup” inventor Steve Blank…

As you can see, it’s crucial to do this steps next to your product development. If you don’t, you may end up with product that not solves a problem and don’t get users because it’s to far away from their expectations.

I will explain you the 4 steps above in short to give you an overview how great Customer Development looks like:

Customer discovery: Start by just talking to potential users groups which you think have the problem you want to solve. Listen. Ask shit loads of questions around the problem, if they have it at all, what are they doing right now to solve it, and try to validate if they willing to pay for this.
Customer validation: If needed, pivot the product to match the customers needs, which you gathered before. Then talk to even more and find out if more people/businesses have this specific problem. Learn more about their use cases.
Customer creation: When you go to alpha/beta testing the product, follow up with the people you talked before and ask matching potential customers to use your product. Be with them when they use it. Learn and gather feedback and involve the customers.
Company building: If you sure that you found a solution which serves its purpose, then turn your testers into paying customers and transition into a real company. This is often the phase of truth, because you will find out if they want to pay for your service.

That’s it. Sounds simple, but his hard to deliver in a good manner.

If you want to dive deeper about how Steve thinks Customer Development should be done, then click the link to the full slide deck here…

I know this was only a basic high level explanation of this method, but it’s a necessary way to go. Especially before you invest to much time and resources to build your first version of the product.

If you want to read a more practicable advise, I recommend you the book of Rob Fitzpatrick “The Mom Test”. A great short guide in how you talk and develop customers.

I met Rob before. He’s a cool example that even introverts can go this way. But that’s for a future transmission.

So stay curious.

your favourite Domi

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