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by darkxanthos 5243 days ago
"Customer development"

I'm not sure that word means what you think it does. The whole point of customer development as I interpret it is to GTFO of the building, find customers, build relationships with them, and start making money ASAP.

Maybe the OP has had experience with individuals just getting to customer engagement and then sitting on their thumbs? In that case I can understand the frustration but it seems less customer development focused and more "why don't people want to make money" focused.
2 comments
dfragnito 5243 days ago
"Customer Development" is not the same as a having an effective "business model". I believe they should be treated differently. They will impact the product/service in differnt ways.

Getting in front of (selling to) 1, 10 or even 100 customers, collect feedback, implement feedback is easy. Getting in front of (selling to) 1000, 10,000, 100,000 is hard if your business model does not scale.

"Customer Development" is more "will they buy it"

"bus dev" is more "how to best penetrate the market efficiently"

"Bus Dev" will force you to change your product in ways you may never imagined, and these changes will not be realized from customer feedback. Customers do not care if you have an efficient b model.

Make sure you are not solving the wrong problem see http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/the-wrong-problem/

While going through the customer feedback process I realized are b model sucked (it always bothered me). The article above inspired to me solve the right problem which has caused us to make a significant change to our offering.

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michaporat 5243 days ago
If that's what people mean by Customer Development - then I'm all for it. Absolutely people should get in front of their customers, build relationships, and drive to revenues.

My experience, which led to this post, is that when asking people about their go-to market strategy, how they will scale, answer is customer development. Which is still fine BTW - except in the one (too common recently) case where this focus stops them from figuring out how to build a business out of that customer base. How to scale financially. That's my issue. That's when trouble sets in.

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