Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

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This stood out to me:

> In my view, this is the nastiest of all startup sins: failing to involve customers and their feedback from literally the first day of a startup’s life, keeping the most vital opinions silent—those of the eventual customers—for far longer than necessary.

There are two ways to interpret it:

1. Get something in front of customers ASAP as how customers use (or don't use) something will tell you far more than anything else; or

2. Ask potential customers what they want.

If Steve means (1) I strongly agree. If he means (2) I strongly disagree. As anyone who has had to work on software specifications and documenting user "requirements" can attest: people have absolutely no clue what they want other than "everything".

Look at Apple. They don't use focus groups or surveys [1]. IIRC I'm pretty sure the size of the first iPad was determined by Steve Jobs picking up several differently sized prototypes until he found one that felt right. If this is urban myth, I bet it's actually not that far from the truth.

Sadly I think Steve (Blank) means (2) since he says "eventual customers". But perhaps he means give away something you'll eventually turn into a revenue-generating product, at which point your users became customers.

[1]: http://www.phonearena.com/news/Apples-Phil-Schiller-We-dont-...

Sadly I think Steve (Blank) means (2) since he says "eventual customers".

I don't think so. Steve is pretty clear in his books and videos and what-not that the goal is to A. understand customer problems and pain-point, and B. find out if the product you are proposing to build (based on those pain points) has a viable market or not.

So no, he isn't saying "ask customers what they want" in the "a faster horse" sense. He's advocating for talking to customers, engaging with them, finding out what their needs are, demonstrating your proposed product to them, and determining if there is a market for "thing I propose to build" before spending a tremendous amount of time and money developing, advertising, and promoting "thing I propose to build."

Or at least that's what I've always gotten from his materials, and it seems like a pretty clear message to me.

About half a year back, I was at some pitching contest where Steve Blank was a judge. He was bluntly clear about his point of view:

Think of a product; ask a hundred potential customers whether they'd buy that product. If not, discard and repeat this process.

Listening to Steve talk, he's very upfront that there is no blueprint for creating a successful business/startup. His advice is not meant to be taken as "here's a list of steps, do them, and you'll be successful." His advice is more like a set of guidelines you'll likely want to pay attention to (or at least knowingly disagree with).

With respect to asking potential customers what they want, he's said specifically that you should do that, but don't take their answer and create exactly that. In his view, there's an "art" to startups that involves taking feedback and turning it into something that's useful. For example, the iPod/iTunes ecosystem wasn't something mp3 player users' would've come up with, but they probably would say, "I want it to be easier to get music my music on my mp3 player" and that's something Apple definitely knew.

There's definitely ambiguity around what you should asking potential customers and I don't think he'd claim there's a right answer about what to ask or not to ask. But it seems pretty likely that talking to people is worthwhile activity.

That said, he also admits there are exceptions to every piece of advice. You could avoid talking to anyone and still be very successful. It's just something he's seen correlated with success.

I'm not sure this is where I remember most of this from, but I think this podcast [1] has most of what I'm paraphrasing.

[1] http://startupsuccesspodcast.com/2012/02/show-134-prof-steve...

#2 is not about what they want it's a question of what's broken.

Spend some time around people at large company's and you can find a host of things that just don't work. EX: Time tracking software tends to track time but rarely integrates into any other useful system. You could literally make a billion dollar company focused on fixing that.

I think the Apple example is oversold and in any case apples to oranges. In the very first days of Apple computer, they built a computer that Woz would want to use, then showed it to fellow hackers. That was enough to get the flywheel going and they built from there. Later they did more radical innovation, but remember that those often failed (Lisa) or needed tens of millions in marketing to really take off (Macintosh). As much as we venerate the Macintosh now, it had trouble getting traction at a profitable price in the early going.

2. is easy to disagree with. Yes, if you ask people "what do you want" then you might not get anywhere. But, if you ask, "what are you prepared to throw money at to solve a painful problem", then you are onto something.

It is easy to frame the question in a bad way. It is also easy to ask the wrong people. What you want is people with money that will pay for something that will make their life easier and are able to see value in it.

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