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

1 2 3 4LaunchWeekend

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