Ask HN: is customer development necessary for an existing B2B market? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: is customer development necessary for an existing B2B market?

6 pointstoumhi6 comments

I'm in the very early stage of a creation of a startup focused on online file sharing for companies: the idea is to do something like sharefile.com or smartfile.com but in France. So I know that there's a market with established competitors (also a few ones in France). I still can't decide whether doing early customer discovery, testing hypotheses etc is a good idea or whether I should spend time on building a product instead. I'm not sure whether customer development methodology applies for an existing market with existing competitors.

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Is it necessary? That's arguable. Is it a good idea? I would argue "yes."

Think about it... just because there are existing competitors doesn't mean there's nothing for you to learn. In fact, learning about those competitors is part of the Customer Development process. How are you going to differentiate your offering? Here's a hint... having a better handle on the problems your customers need solved, gives you a leg up on providing a better solution.

Anyway, if you go through the CD process, as laid out in The Four Steps to the Epiphany, you'll find that a big part of it is about learning the state of the existing market, making decisions about market type, positioning, etc.

The other point to realize, as @sgblank himself points out, is that if you already have a lot of knowledge of the area you're working in, and if your existing ideas are mostly right, the CD process will just go very fast... you'll basically just being quickly confirming what you already know. Just beware of confirmation bias and make sure you're not tricking yourself into seeing what you want to see.

Thanks, it helps! I was thinking that it was better to focus on a couple of main features as highlighted by competitors. It's not that I have a lot of knowledge about the area, but I thought that I could see what the competitors in bigger markets have done and use it to my advantage.

That would be resounding yes. I have over ten years of experience in my market, but I still learn something every time I talk to a potential customer. Talking with customers will challenge most of your assumptions, and we can all use a little time outside our bubbles.

OK, I was doubtful of spending time learning things that competitors expose in their "features & benefits" page, but now I'm convinced I should spend some time out of the building :-)

As Steve Blank says, "most products fail for lack of customers, not technology." Why would you spend time building a product--almost any product--unless you are absolutely sure there's a market for it? What makes your file sharing service different from the others? Where will its market share(and revenue) come from? Why will people choose your product instead of entrenched competition? And why would you spend weeks or months building something unless you're absolutely certain there's a market for it?

I'm almost sure there is a market for it because there are a couple of competitors in the english-speaking market. I intend to make better marketing than existing competitors, that's how I see the differenciation as of now. But I'm not sure exactly which feature is the most important to build at the beginning, so in that sense it might be useful to talk to customers beforehand.

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