What’s the value of customer discovery?
Every serial entrepreneur I’ve ever talked to (except Sanjay) recognizes the value of customer discovery. (We’ll talk about Sanjay later.)
My buddy Jeff declared: If we had spent the first three months doing discovery, we would have known what to spend money on.
Yes, exactly.
Three assets the entrepreneur must protect: money, time and energy. Founders (and founding teams) have limited money, a short time-frame, and only so much energy to focus on making progress.
Although business plans have fallen out of favor for startups, planning is still a good practice. But startup planning should be for the next 5 days, 30 days and 90 days. Perhaps longer, but certainly not a 5-year plan.
Customer discovery is the research and development a startup needs – not just for the product or service – for the structure of the business. Customer discovery done well will inform sales and marketing, but also operations, distribution, and the financial model. Customer discovery often helps a startup design the product roadmap, too.