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The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany
“This is a must read for all startups and stakeholders.”
— Steve Blank , author of The 4 Steps to the Epiphany, creator of Customer Development methodology
“The Entrepreneur’s Guide is an easy read. It is written in a conversational tone, doesn’t take itself too seriously, and avoids extraneous fluff.”
— Eric Ries , Author & Creator of the Lean Startup methodology
“Get the CustDev book to dive deep into customer interviews and understand how your product can be developed to meet your customers' needs.”
— Dan Martell , Founder of Flowtown, angel investor
Customer Development is a four-step framework for helping startups discover and validate their customers, product, and go-to-market strategy, developed by Steve Blank and an integral part of Eric Ries' Lean Startup methodology. Focused on the Customer Discovery step, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development is an easy to follow guide for finding early adopters, building a Minimum Viable Product, finding Product-Market fit, and establishing a sales and marketing roadmap.
Deemed a "must-read" by Steve Blank and Eric Ries , inside you will find detailed customer development and lean startup concept definitions, a step-by-step approach to best practices, a business model analysis guide, case studies, rich graphics, as well as worksheets and exercises. No matter the stage of your business, you will return often to this guide to learn how to build a product people want ;" get out of the building ;" foster strong customer relationships; test business model risk; reach out to early adopters; conduct startup marketing; create a customer funnel based on buyers' process; and prepare your startup to scale up.
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development: A Cheat Sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany, affectionately known as the “CustDev book,” serves as course text for classes at Stanford University, University of Chicago, Boston University, DePaul University, University of Minnesota and University of Norway.
“Our UCL (University College London) students love The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development. Thanks to Brant & Patrick for writing this helpful book. ”
— Dave Chapman , Deputy Head of the Department of Management Science and Innovation at UCL (University College London)
“Love it! Required reading for all NYU entrepreneurs.”
— Frank Rimalovski , Managing Director of NYU Innovation Venture Fund
This book is both an introduction for those unfamiliar with lean concepts and highly actionable for lean practitioners. It is a user friendly guide, written to be accessible to marketing professionals, Engineers startup founders and entrepreneurs, VCs, angels, and anyone else involved in building scalable startups.
Existing companies will benefit to from applying Customer Development principles described in detail herein: for example, startups struggling to achieve market traction, or well established companies seeking to spark new innovation.
This is a business book for startups like no other. No fluff, but rather sound principles and concrete steps to take to build your business. Get up to speed on Customer Development now.
— Steve Blank , author of The 4 Steps to the Epiphany, creator of Customer Development methodology
“The Entrepreneur’s Guide is an easy read. It is written in a conversational tone, doesn’t take itself too seriously, and avoids extraneous fluff.”
— Eric Ries , Author & Creator of the Lean Startup methodology
“Get the CustDev book to dive deep into customer interviews and understand how your product can be developed to meet your customers' needs.”
— Dan Martell , Founder of Flowtown, angel investor
Customer Development is a four-step framework for helping startups discover and validate their customers, product, and go-to-market strategy, developed by Steve Blank and an integral part of Eric Ries' Lean Startup methodology. Focused on the Customer Discovery step, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development is an easy to follow guide for finding early adopters, building a Minimum Viable Product, finding Product-Market fit, and establishing a sales and marketing roadmap.
Deemed a "must-read" by Steve Blank and Eric Ries , inside you will find detailed customer development and lean startup concept definitions, a step-by-step approach to best practices, a business model analysis guide, case studies, rich graphics, as well as worksheets and exercises. No matter the stage of your business, you will return often to this guide to learn how to build a product people want ;" get out of the building ;" foster strong customer relationships; test business model risk; reach out to early adopters; conduct startup marketing; create a customer funnel based on buyers' process; and prepare your startup to scale up.
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development: A Cheat Sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany, affectionately known as the “CustDev book,” serves as course text for classes at Stanford University, University of Chicago, Boston University, DePaul University, University of Minnesota and University of Norway.
“Our UCL (University College London) students love The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development. Thanks to Brant & Patrick for writing this helpful book. ”
— Dave Chapman , Deputy Head of the Department of Management Science and Innovation at UCL (University College London)
“Love it! Required reading for all NYU entrepreneurs.”
— Frank Rimalovski , Managing Director of NYU Innovation Venture Fund
This book is both an introduction for those unfamiliar with lean concepts and highly actionable for lean practitioners. It is a user friendly guide, written to be accessible to marketing professionals, Engineers startup founders and entrepreneurs, VCs, angels, and anyone else involved in building scalable startups.
Existing companies will benefit to from applying Customer Development principles described in detail herein: for example, startups struggling to achieve market traction, or well established companies seeking to spark new innovation.
This is a business book for startups like no other. No fluff, but rather sound principles and concrete steps to take to build your business. Get up to speed on Customer Development now.
104 pages, Paperback
First published April 23, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
November 25, 2012
First the title of the book is very misleading. It should have been "The Entrepreneur's guide to STEP 1 of customer development. Yes, that is right; it covers just one - fourth of the process and NOT the entire 4 steps. Second, it is poor at even setting out a guide to entrepreneurs on the basis of Customer development/Lean start up methodologies. There are far better books for that such as Running Lean by Ash Maurya.
Don't waste your money or time as I did. Skip this book.
Don't waste your money or time as I did. Skip this book.
July 27, 2016
Interesting. Complementary to The Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Lean Startup. I like most of the real case scenarios and stories.
He briefly covers Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Segmentation (Geoffrey Moore), Lean Startup Methodology, Steve Blank’s Four Steps of Customer Development (Customer Discovery, Customer Validation, Customer Creation, Company Building).
Good Points
- Get out of the Building (know your customers, visit them in their environment).
- “Most startups fail because they didn’t develop their market, not because they didn’t develop their product.”
- “The startup founder owns the vision, the customer owns the pain.” – Cooper and Vlaskovits
- Document and test your assumptions
The 8 Steps to Customer Discovery
- Document your C-P-S (Customer-Problem-Solution) Hypothesis
- Brainstorm your business model
- Find potential customers to interview
- Arrange a meeting with these people
- Get useful information from the meetings
- Decide whether you need more information, can move forward, or need to pivot (back to step 1)
- Develop your MVP based on what you've learned
- You should be solving your customers' problems, and you should be making money. If not, pivot (back to step 1)
He briefly covers Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Segmentation (Geoffrey Moore), Lean Startup Methodology, Steve Blank’s Four Steps of Customer Development (Customer Discovery, Customer Validation, Customer Creation, Company Building).
Good Points
- Get out of the Building (know your customers, visit them in their environment).
- “Most startups fail because they didn’t develop their market, not because they didn’t develop their product.”
- “The startup founder owns the vision, the customer owns the pain.” – Cooper and Vlaskovits
- Document and test your assumptions
The 8 Steps to Customer Discovery
- Document your C-P-S (Customer-Problem-Solution) Hypothesis
- Brainstorm your business model
- Find potential customers to interview
- Arrange a meeting with these people
- Get useful information from the meetings
- Decide whether you need more information, can move forward, or need to pivot (back to step 1)
- Develop your MVP based on what you've learned
- You should be solving your customers' problems, and you should be making money. If not, pivot (back to step 1)
October 21, 2013
Nice book - easy read, touch repetitive at times - and, as it says in the title, a cheat sheet for Four Steps to the Epiphany - nice to read but probably better to read Four Steps to the Epiphany first, make your own notes, and then read this.
Although a better idea is to stop reading books and focus on your startup ;)
Although a better idea is to stop reading books and focus on your startup ;)
January 28, 2012
Whether you are in Sales, Development, Marketing or Customer Services, this quick read goes over many actions and processes you may start using in your profession immediately, in order to validate your assumptions.
October 8, 2012
No book can tell you how to do it, JFD! This book offers a very nice framework for getting it done.
September 9, 2017
Applying the principles found in this book to my new startup. I will probably come back and edit this review and report my findings and experiences.
April 29, 2011
If you are starting a company or building a product, then it is an absolute must read.
May 15, 2021
An easy-to-read book about Customer Development mixed with different points of view on how to approach each of CuzDev's steps.
Customer Development is simply about questioning your core business assumptions. If you've read Steve Blank's and Eric Ries's books, you will find the same concepts presented in a slightly different way which at some moments I found really useful.
Overall, if you're interested in Customer Development, I would recommend giving it a try.
Customer Development is simply about questioning your core business assumptions. If you've read Steve Blank's and Eric Ries's books, you will find the same concepts presented in a slightly different way which at some moments I found really useful.
Overall, if you're interested in Customer Development, I would recommend giving it a try.
March 7, 2012
A very brief overview into Customer Development, mostly drawing from The Four Steps to Epiphany and The Lean Startup with a hint of Business Model Generation thrown in for good measure. Probably a good intro to someone who has a vague idea of what Customer Development is but who needs more details to fill in the blanks.
The book is well written and the material is truly worthwhile for anyone involved in or considering entrepreneurship or participating in a startup of any form. This book together with the books mentioned above will easily make you conversant in the modern startup lingo and topics. This book is especially timely for an early stage startup working on their hypotheses and customer discovery.
Sadly, the editing and all-around lack of professionalism in the printed form of the book shows and bothers me a little. There's more typos than normal and a lot of the pages feel empty, even vacant. While I applaud the brevity and keeping it concise, the author wants to charge $25 per book, way above the normal price for a book much larger than this was. Taking into account the amount of direct quotes and the strong dependence on the surrounding material mentioned above, there is one inevitable conclusion to come into: this book is overpriced. Even so, it might still be well worth your money.
The book is well written and the material is truly worthwhile for anyone involved in or considering entrepreneurship or participating in a startup of any form. This book together with the books mentioned above will easily make you conversant in the modern startup lingo and topics. This book is especially timely for an early stage startup working on their hypotheses and customer discovery.
Sadly, the editing and all-around lack of professionalism in the printed form of the book shows and bothers me a little. There's more typos than normal and a lot of the pages feel empty, even vacant. While I applaud the brevity and keeping it concise, the author wants to charge $25 per book, way above the normal price for a book much larger than this was. Taking into account the amount of direct quotes and the strong dependence on the surrounding material mentioned above, there is one inevitable conclusion to come into: this book is overpriced. Even so, it might still be well worth your money.
July 23, 2011
This is a good and quick way into Blank's customer development methodology. Great for people who don't want to wade through Blank's original which is much longer and is a hard read.
November 17, 2011
Great resource. It's a "lean" book!!!
January 25, 2012
Too expensive for 96 short pages. There are some interesting points which point in the direction of reading 'The Four Steps to the Epiphany,' but overall the book is sadly disappointing.
February 29, 2012
Motivating. Can't wait to start my own business
July 31, 2012
Good but inferior to "Running Lean" and "The Lean Startup"
December 25, 2019
Tries to make Steve Blank teachings more actionable. In my opinion, it’s smart in providing frameworks that help surface the assumptions to test, and in suggesting more tactical questions to raise in that process.
It misses the point, though, about prioritization. What’s the riskiest assumption you’re should be testing right now? A clear example is the step 1: define you customer-problem-solution fit. Finding customer-problem fit and problem-solution can be tricky on their own right, so I’d split them and prioritize the former before the latter.
I still believe lean customer centric product development is a better alternative to (and in many ways just about the same as) Customer Development as explained by Blank. However, there’s always value in making your thoughts objective by writing them on paper and then being systematically rigorous about putting them to the test.
It misses the point, though, about prioritization. What’s the riskiest assumption you’re should be testing right now? A clear example is the step 1: define you customer-problem-solution fit. Finding customer-problem fit and problem-solution can be tricky on their own right, so I’d split them and prioritize the former before the latter.
I still believe lean customer centric product development is a better alternative to (and in many ways just about the same as) Customer Development as explained by Blank. However, there’s always value in making your thoughts objective by writing them on paper and then being systematically rigorous about putting them to the test.
March 31, 2019
Good outline of customer development
If you want to learn customer development in a hurry then this is a pretty good book to get started. Though I’d say read Lean Startup, and Startup Owners Manual for more in-depth.
If you want to learn customer development in a hurry then this is a pretty good book to get started. Though I’d say read Lean Startup, and Startup Owners Manual for more in-depth.
August 15, 2017
Does a decent job explaining how to go about finding and fitting into a market with a product. How the target market needs to constantly be evaluated and how to present to that market.
March 5, 2018
Handful guide on how to find ypur costumer. It's kind of a summary of Steve Blank's book.
March 31, 2019
I assume one has to be initially acquainted with Eric Ries and Steve Blank books/methodologies first before reading this book.
October 12, 2019
Great quick start guide to customer development. Must read for those with no exposure to this thinking or others that want a quick refresher in an easy to digest format.
December 28, 2019
So cool
Great roadmap for startup customer development. Awesome book recommend by a Stanford prof during a product market fit course. Highly recommended!
Great roadmap for startup customer development. Awesome book recommend by a Stanford prof during a product market fit course. Highly recommended!
April 1, 2020
An easy solution for customer development. Smartly written
April 14, 2020
A great handbook for entrepreneurs.
Easy to apply, doesn't take too much time.
Easy to apply, doesn't take too much time.
January 8, 2013
The content is solid, though not particularly groundbreaking. Much of the subject matter is what I would consider common sense but explained with buzzwords and catch phrases. The biggest letdown with this book is that the title and intro lead you to believe that this is an all encompassing guide to the customer development process when in fact its a detailed guide of one phase and barely scratches the surface of the others.
January 15, 2012
A very to-the-point book on developing your idea and getting it in the hands of interested people. I was mislead by the "Four Steps" as this really only talked about one: Customer Development. However, this books brevity and foundation in real applications kept me interested. A good read for those thinking of entrepreneurship.
January 1, 2014
كتاب رائع جدا جدا
1-يجب يكون هناك فلسفه لديك وانت تبيع المنتج الذى يحل مشكله لدى المستخدم
2-موسس الشركه على ان يربط بين رويته للمنتج وبين ردود الافعال التى تنتج عن المستخدمين حتى ينتج حلولا اخرى للمنتج
3-فى الشركات يجب ان تبتع الاحصائيات وليس الكلام العايم
4- عندما تنزل الى السوق تحسسه جيدا قبل النزول حتى تستطيع الحصول على حصه جيده به
1-يجب يكون هناك فلسفه لديك وانت تبيع المنتج الذى يحل مشكله لدى المستخدم
2-موسس الشركه على ان يربط بين رويته للمنتج وبين ردود الافعال التى تنتج عن المستخدمين حتى ينتج حلولا اخرى للمنتج
3-فى الشركات يجب ان تبتع الاحصائيات وليس الكلام العايم
4- عندما تنزل الى السوق تحسسه جيدا قبل النزول حتى تستطيع الحصول على حصه جيده به
September 1, 2019
-As described, this book is the boiled down version of The Four Steps to Epiphany and angled for entrepreneurs.
-Very good for reference. If you are filling out a business model canvas or doing customer development, it refreshes your memory on the moving parts in each step.
-Very good for reference. If you are filling out a business model canvas or doing customer development, it refreshes your memory on the moving parts in each step.
September 14, 2014
If you have read 'The four steps to the Epiphany' prior to reading this book it is a very good summarize of this books findings and it provides you with a clear direction of what you need to do in the first phase of a startup.
May 22, 2016
I recommend this book to every entrepreneur. Not only for those who are planing to build a new company and a new product. It's as important for the always ongoing development of your company. I also see it as a tool for testing and developing campaigns and other non-product related things.
June 8, 2016
Great introduction to the complexities of building a successful product, chock full of practical advice for how to tackle them. A superbly concise book, but expect to come away with lots of work to do!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews