4. “
If I had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said
faster horses
- Henry Ford (kinda…)
Build and they will come is not a
strategy, it is a prayer
-Steve Blank
4
VS.
8. Super Fan
8
The Good
▹ Evangelize you product
▹ Post to social media
The Bad
▹ Only care about THEIR workflow/problem
▹ Demand Super User features
▹ ~1% of user base
▹ Diminishing revenue/interaction ratio
9. Silent Majority
9
The Good
▹ Pay their bills on time
▹ High revenue/interaction ratio
▹ More open to Solutions, not Replacements
The Bad
▹ Not going to evangelize your product
▹ Tough to receive feedback from
10. “It is time to stop paving the cow
paths… We cannot achieve
breakthroughs in performance by
cutting fat or automating existing
processes. Rather, we must
challenge old assumptions and
shed the old rules that made the
business underperform in the
first place.
- Michael Hammer, Professor
at MIT
10
11. 11
Startup Calculus
Issue Result
+ Startups have limited resources Cannot work on everything
+ Startups need customers Customers have opinions
+ Customer do not want to change Customers have preconceived ideas or processes
= Either show them the error of their ways or get new customers
13. Siebel
▹ “Invented” CRM
▹ Backed by Oracle
▹ Custom built to meet the
needs of the customer
(“bolt-ons”)
Salesforce
▹ Built the best solution
possible, made customer
conform
▹ Did not replace existing
workflows 1-to-1
▹ Educated customers on
better way to work
14. Siebel
Sold to Oracle 2006: $5.85 B
Market Cap 2020: ????
Salesforce
Market Cap 2006: $ 1.12 B
Market Cap 2020: $164 B
15. ““A real strategy is defined by what
it leaves out. If you can’t name
some important choices that
were not included, it’s probably
not a very good guide because
you can’t try to do everything.”
- Mitch Daniels, President of
Purdue University
15
21. Punchline
21
Setting up feedback
▹ Set up multiple channels - make it easy
▹ Focus on data-driven insight, not just
anecdotes
￭ Diversify your feedback channels
Listening
▹ Make what the largest, quietest customer
wants
▹ Solve the PROBLEM, do not replace in kind
Building
▹ Stay hyper-focused - create your “beachhead”
22. ““An innovator should have
understanding of one’s customers
and their problems via empirical,
observational, anecdotal
methods or even intuition. They
should also feel free to ignore
customers’ inputs.”
– Patrick Vlaskovits , Author of
“Entrepreneur's Guide to
Customer
Development”
22
23. Resources
23
● Henry Ford and Innovation –HBR
○ https://hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast
● Feature Fatigue –HBR
○ https://hbr.org/2006/02/defeating-feature-fatigue
● Features ruin Software –Passageways Blog
○ http://www.passageways.com/blog/software-with-
vision/
● Reengineering Work –HBR
○ https://hbr.org/1990/07/reengineering-work-dont-
automate-obliterate
● Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey Moore (book & video overview)
○ https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing-
High-Tech-Mainstream/dp/0060517123
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-97AXOPzJo
● Creating a beachhead (video)
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apxlnuvhilc
