[pmoehring]

I'd say, the review was actually good for Josh, as it gave him very honest feedback, probably much more frank than what he heard from people in person. People tend to say either "great, keep on going" or are very negative about a product, without being specific. It's easy to ignore the negative comments and write them off as 'hating'. I would venture that TC is an authoritative source, and therefore he took a hard look at what maybe needs to change.

[benreyes]

Another point Steve Blank talks about this in Stanford series of talks on customer development: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2060 [video]

He mentions any type of PR, Press including TechCrunch coverage shouldn't be sought after before contact with the customers and is part of a strategy and not a random tactic. And this is typically after you figure out what business you are in, who your customers are and how do you scale demand for the company (Product Market Fit).

A lot of the valuable lessons and negative comments that Josh took in that early TechCrunch post could have been gathered and learnt in a non-public fashion during customer discovery and development.

[pmoehring]

Absolutely, good point. It's hard to resist the urge, though - seeking coverage (to get confirmation or otherwise) is only natural when you are passionate about your start up and want to tell the world what you are doing.

Customer development is still massively undervalued, though.

[NiloParedes]

Customer development is very much like the screening of a unreleased movie. A studio will get a nearly finished product in front of movie-goers before releasing it using that feedback to tighten plot points, editing, etc. The difference with a web-based product and a movie is that continually feedback loop never ends for the web-based product.