What process should entrepreneurs follow in developing their business model?

Take-aways from a talk in the Trust Center on 6/27/16

1. “Get out of the office...and into the world” – steve blank’s customer development process

• Step 1+2 - The search phase:
• Step 1: Customers discovery - building a hypothesis around who are your customers and what are their needs.
• Step 2: Customer validation -  
• Testing the hypothesis by talking with the customers.
• Testing  the solution to validate the market needs: product- market fit is the key to success
• Pivot and iterate when necessary

When talking with customers: look for insights not just answers. Then change the canvas based on the new learnings.

• Step 3+4 - The execution phase:
• Step 3: Customer creation
• Step 4: Company building
• Lessons:
• Don’t rush to the execution phase before you’re done with the search phase.
• The search phase is not something you can outsource.  You got to talk with the customers directly (unlike with large companies where they rely on sales/ marketing to contribute customers insights)

2.  Build measure Lean loop – Eric Ries’s lean startup

Hypothesis → experiment → test → measure results → insights/ learnings

• MVP- minimal viable product
• Build the minimal features to get feedback.
• What should we be building and in what order?
• What makes your customers lives different before and after they were introduced to your product?
• Failure is OK! Failure without learning is not OK…