Steve Blank: Vision versus Hallucination - Founders and Pivots

Tell me you understand your entire business model and that you thought through the rest of the canvas.

We (Fogbeam Labs) are certainly trying to get to this level. I've read (most of) TFSTTE four or five times now, and feel like I understand the process a little bit more each time through. Additionally, the more we talk to customers, the more we understand.

Probably my biggest "epiphany" lately though, involves "traditional" market research. Our first round of "friendly first contacts" interviews were very scattershot and unfocused... it was almost literally "interview anybody who will talk to you." Now, I've learned a lot more about how to research various industry segments, and learn about the statistical and demographic stuff (using Census data, Hoovers, etc.) and now we're starting to actually formulate real elements of our market hypothesis (eg, "manufacturing firms in NC with > 500 employees have problem X and our product solves problem X for them" or whatever) that we can go out and specifically try to disprove.

Developing the product in parallel with doing CustDev, with a very small team, has meant that we probably made our fair share of "typical engineer mistakes" (like building features that we don't actually know there is demand for), but altogether, I think we're on a good path.

If we ever make it big, we'll definitely owe @sgblank a tremendous debt of gratitude. Reading TFSTTE was such an eye opener for me, I don't even know how to describe it. :-)

I like the idea of there being an "order of operations" in what to consider changing, and I like it being based on "what brings money in" and "what keeps us from spending unnecessarily". Definitely something I'll put in my notebook!

But even with a business model, the product needs to evolve based on customer engagement and feedback, which sometimes takes us to a place we would have never imagined in our vision.

I don't think I understand your stance on when to put your visionary foot down and when to listen to customers.

Now... this might just be me, but I get asked for input, I give it, with rationalization/reasoning, and I get summarily ignored. Almost every single time. Certainly on any issue of substance. As I say, it may be me, or it may be the people I've chosen to give my time to. I think it's a mix of both, but... they tend to only want their ideas validated, not disproven or shot down. My answers in almost all cases are "it doesn't really matter what I say - or you say - you need to try the idea out, and get feedback from the data and customers (or non customers)". And I'm accused of not believing in an idea, or not having faith in people, or being too negative, or whatever. It's become dishearterning, as I generally wouldn't bother donating my time and talents to parties that I didn't think were worthwhile or had merit in the first place.

Additionally, while my successes have been modest, I've also got a wealth of failures and errors in my past to draw on, and it's truly sad to watch some people make the same mistakes I made 10 years ago. The difference is, I had no mentors or people to guide me 10 years ago - I would have loved to have had that sort of input to save me time, money and sanity. I guess some mistakes you have to make for yourself, perhaps?

In addition to giving advice, another element of having an advisory board, that I was only recently introduced to, is this: If you get advisors who are, for example, retired execs who don't want to work full-time, but still want to be "in the game", they can be very valuable in terms of connections, making calls for you to their friends who are still in the business world, etc. I heard a story related once about a startup who wanted to pursue defense contracts, and they recruited a retired general to their board and he was invaluable in helping them navigate that world.