The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany

The results of the Customer Development process may indicate that the assumptions about your product, your customers and your market are all wrong. In fact, they probably will. And then it is your responsibility, as the idea-generator (read: entrepreneur), to interpret the data you have elicited and modify your next set of assumptions to iterate up

The point isn’t that the individuals within a segment do communicate with each other, but rather that they “have access” to do so.

Market segments are comprised of like people, who share a common interest, who have access to each other and who look to one another as a trusted reference.

“Separate the zeal of entrepreneurship from the blindness of hubris.” #CustDev #LeanStartup http://bit.ly/bdtjFD

Some entrepreneurs would rather nurse their doomed prized possession – the Grand Idea – rather than learning quickly that there is no market for it.

if you don’t have a lot of money, you need to act like you are re-segmenting a market. Launching in a new market requires millions of marketing dollars to teach customers what the new product does and why they need it.

If you are branded by media and analysts in a way that confuses customers or lumps you with existing products incorrectly, you may never be able to undo the damage.

Your positioning will form the basis of your communications with all of your constituents, including customers, investors, partners, employees, etc. For your customer, the goal of positioning is to have them understand what benefit they will receive from you and why you are better than everyone else.

In a Nutshell: A product with the fewest number of features needed to achieve a specific objective, and users are willing to “pay” in some form of a scarce resource.