[gbelote]

To give you an embarrassing personal anecdote: In my first startup I wanted to do customer development. The lean startup was a fresh and growingly popular idea, and we devoted more time and energy talking to potential customers than turning our proof-of-concept prototype into an MVP. It looked smart on paper. Unfortunately that didn't go so well and my conclusion was that we were doing customer development wrong. So we tried to do customer development "better" instead of pivot.

I was so mentally set in my idea that I consistently gravitated to the next-simplest explanation when I encountered sad evidence. And even though I believed I was being smart and understood customer development, I was following a checklist of things I thought I was supposed to do and was confused when we stagnated. I pretty much was asking to learn my lesson the hard way. :)

It seems very plausible that new products and services can be built to help founders be more effective at customer development. However one major obstacle if you outsource customer development too much will be dodging bullets as the messenger.

If I had used a CD service I'd probably assume the person was doing it wrong. They don't get my product, they are bad at sales, they aren't finding the right customers, etc. And then I'd wonder why I was throwing away my money (out of my personal pocket) for a service that wasn't "working". Unless you're a customer development superhero there might even be a little truth in all those things – it's going to take you a while to orient to the company's vision and market.

Another issue is that you'll probably see adverse selection from your clients. Folks who are good at customer development or stumble into promising early traction probably aren't going to hire a consultant for that stuff. So you're going to get people who either have an aversion to talking to customers and/or have hit a wall finding customers. And it's quite possible that the stuff you'll try is very similar to the stuff they tried and failed. So most of your clients might be biased towards failed startups, which may create a lot of churn and make it harder to gain inbound leads.