Start With The Customer - And Work BACKWARDS

Start with the customer and work backwards.

In other words,

Identify a customer problem, validate it - THEN build a solution.

If you don’t, here’s what might happen:

I was speaking to a founder of a now-defunct tech startup.

He and his partners came up with what THEY thought was a cool consumer mobile app idea.

They raised a significant amount of money to bring it to market.

They then struggled for several years to achieve product-market fit.

They learned the hard way that you can’t sell a solution to a customer who isn’t convinced they have a problem.

After reliving the peaks and valleys of his journey,

He finally concluded that they built the product because they COULD.

Not because they had identified a new customer problem that had not been addressed.

Or an existing problem to which they felt they could provide a better solution.

They fell in love with THEIR idea and the challenge of making it work.

They made the app work. But in the end - it didn’t work.

So, just because you CAN build something,

Doesn’t necessarily mean that you SHOULD.

At least not until you’ve verified that a problem does in fact exist, and that customers demand a solution.

Start with the customer, and work back from there. 🎯

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ready for customer research but don't know where to start? Reach out and I'll help you get moving in the right direction.