Customer validation 101 by Thor Ernstsson of Casual Corp.

1. Customer Validation
tips and tactics to make sure you’re solving the right problem

2. What Is It?
Validate assumptions before spending time and money
on execution
Customer Validation
The customer “proof” that you have what it takes to
execute against your business opportunity

3. When Do I Use It?
Nearly every successful company can be analyzed
through this framework:
Vision - aspirational goal
Opportunity - the business at scale
Validation - team, product, market, etc

4. So What Is Customer Validation?
Restated:
Customer Validation means demonstrating that a
particular customer segment perceives value in your
offering
This is critical in any pitch, to VCs, clients, employees,
and more.

5. How do I Validate?
There are many many ways to validate your customer
need… but first:
Identify the earliest adopters
The ones that will LOVE your product,
even before it’s ready
and then TALK TO THEM

6. Ultra-niche Segments
If you can’t get 10 users, what makes you think you’ll
reach 10k or 10m?
Ultra-niche segments
Segment aggressively to understand deep issues, not
just what people say they want.

7. Pitfall: Customers
It’s common to talk to friends and other supportive
groups and mistake them for “customers”
Make sure the niche segment are real customers
Get them to pay something… anything
Make sure that you’re determining viability of the
business, not just if someone thinks it’s a good idea

8. Examples
Three types of segments and specific tactics to target
them:
Global 2000 companies
Small business
Consumer Product

9. Global 2000 Customer
Identify the type of person within the Global 2000
company that would be interested
Create 2-4 hypotheses about what they’ll respond to
Find a way to reach out and split test a single value
proposition to your target
Measure open and response rates; don’t expect any
YESes on the first several iterations

10. Global 2000: tools
Lots of relatively cheap tools to identify people,
measure messaging efficacy, and create professional
split-test landing pages

11. Global 2000: outcomes
First phase: messaging
CTR and response rates to emails, e.g. ToutApp:

12. Global 2000: outcomes
Second phase: responses
Once you know what your segment responds to,
track like a normal sales pipeline.
Use lightweight tools, since you’re still testing:

13. Small Business Customer
Understand what else is competing for your customer’s
time / money
The hardest part is identifying your early adopter
segment and getting in front of them
The goal is to find the one thing that drives conversions

14. Small Business: tools
Tools here are often traditional marketing tools:
- Search engine marketing
- Printed materials
- Door-to-door “sales”
- Cold calls
Look for tools that allow you to compare effectiveness
of pitches
Get in front of your customers; Get Out Of The Building

15. Small Business: outcomes
Split test messaging in a similar way, i.e. cold call 500
potential customers and try two different value props:
VP-A: 98% hung up on me
VP-B: 10% hung up on me
Validated Learning:
B is better than A (or at least less bad)
After a few iterations and a lot of NOs, you may start
getting some YESes

16. Concierge MVP
In many cases, because you’ve distilled the value prop
down to a single thing, it’s possible to deliver the
offering without fully investing in building it out.
If the small business client agrees to sign up, then you
can often perform the service that should be automated
in a manual way.
It should be indistinguishable from the customer’s point
of view

17. Consumers
Customer Validation for consumer products is generally
more about scale than selling to individual users
Identify segment & market to them as if the product is
real.
Use qualitative user interviews to identify needs.
Verify them with quantitative tests, and ask for a
nominal payment
Goal: build a backlog of paying users

18. Consumers: tools
Many platforms and marketplaces exist to help validate
consumer need, including:

19. Consumers: case study

20. Audience Examples
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