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Ask HN: Product/Market Fit (Customer Dev) as a Service?

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Ask HN: Product/Market Fit (Customer Dev) as a Service?

#1

Post by jwillgoesfast »

"What if everything you think you know about taking products to market is wrong? What would you do differently if you realized that only 1 out of 10 new product introductions result in a profitable business? Would you continue to operate the same way, week after week, year after year?"

- Steve Blank, Four Steps to Epiphany

Like most startups, I have struggled through the pains of product market fit, multiple pivots and struggling to find customers.

What if there was a way to quickly and accurately determine not only if your idea is on the right track but to iterate through product/market fit and even pivots before you endure the sweat and heartbreak of building a few MVP's?

Obviously there are lots of challenges to creating such a service, but I think it is a discussion worth having. In the spirit of CD, let's start the ball rolling with some questions:

1. Does your resume include a failed startup? 2. With hindsight being 20/20, should you have done more Customer Development? 3. Would you now consider a service to improve and expedite that process?

Re: Ask HN: Product/Market Fit (Customer Dev) as a Service?

#2

Post by benologist »

I think if a startup has spent a bunch of time building a product without considering who should use it and how they should reach those people then they're pretty fundamentally isolated from the industry they wish to service.

Steve Blank's not saying the other 90% were good ideas.

Re: Ask HN: Product/Market Fit (Customer Dev) as a Service?

#3

Post by ef4 »

Your proposal sounds like a wish-fulfillment fantasy for founders who want to skip the hard part.

I'm skeptical that you could generalize the process. But even if you could, it wouldn't make any sense to offer it as a service to startup founders, because you would then control the biggest value creation step. They would be nothing but idea sources, and ideas are worth very little. Instead you would just use your fantastic process to churn out your own products, possibly paying small royalties to people who come to you with good introductions & ideas.

Or let me put it another way: every angel fund, startup accelerator, and VC would love to have a magic way to "quickly and accurately determine if an idea is on the right track". That's what they spend all their time thinking about. Do you really think they're missing something obvious?

Re: Ask HN: Product/Market Fit (Customer Dev) as a Service?

#4

Post by jwillgoesfast »

benologist wrote: post #2

I think if a startup has spent a bunch of time building a product without considering who should use it and how they should reach those people then they're pretty fundamentally isolated from the industry they wish to service. Steve Blank's not saying the other 90% were good ideas.

Good point, there are a lot of bad ideas out there. But, even the best ideas/products are not what they started out as, they involved pivots and market changes. Was this due to luck, or were the founders fundamentally committed to creating a business that adds value vs. simply in love with their "great idea"?

Re: Ask HN: Product/Market Fit (Customer Dev) as a Service?

#5

Post by jwillgoesfast »

ef4 wrote: post #3

Your proposal sounds like a wish-fulfillment fantasy for founders who want to skip the hard part. I'm skeptical that you could generalize the process. But even if you could, it wouldn't make any sense to offer it as a service to startup founders, because you would then control the biggest value creation step. They would be nothing but idea sources, and ideas are worth very little. Instead you would just use your fant…

I don't think the accelerators/funds are missing the obvious, but I do believe that (because of the high signal-to-noise ratio of the startup bubble) many rookie founders don't discern the importance of this process to their success, and end up "hearing what they want to hear" from mentors/books/etc and pick out things like "focus on the experience", "leverage network effects" or the dreaded "get a distribution partner" instead of simply finding customers who would immediately start paying for a solution to their biggest problems.

Re: Ask HN: Product/Market Fit (Customer Dev) as a Service?

#6

Post by guybrushT »

ef4 wrote: post #3

Your proposal sounds like a wish-fulfillment fantasy for founders who want to skip the hard part. I'm skeptical that you could generalize the process. But even if you could, it wouldn't make any sense to offer it as a service to startup founders, because you would then control the biggest value creation step. They would be nothing but idea sources, and ideas are worth very little. Instead you would just use your fant…

That is certainly one interpretation of the OPs question. And you are right: there is no silver bullet/magic formula/secret recipe. There are some nuances in the way the original question is framed. So the framing that 'a way to quickly and accurately determine if your idea is on the right track' is not good - ideas aren't good or bad, they are never on the right or wrong track - they are what they are, just ideas. Its the execution of an idea that paves the way and propels the idea in a specific direction. So, while there isn't (and may never be) a great tool/process/discipline to evaluate ideas - there are tools/processes/disciplines available to evaluate execution.

So, I read the question slightly differently - and I would say there is definitely something here. I can imagine a consulting service (problem-solving and execution discipline for startups - kinda like what mckinsey does for the fortune 500 :)) that could bring structured problem solving, fact-based de-biasing (countering delusions of optimism), focussed execution, research, 'talking to users' (the famous YC mantra) and (I don't have good name for it) lets call it "learning from experience and experiments of others" etc may be possible as a service.

Its the help a startup needs between "office hours" and execution. I do think that there is a piece missing here, that can be developed.

Re: Ask HN: Product/Market Fit (Customer Dev) as a Service?

#8

Post by benologist »

jwillgoesfast wrote: post #4
benologist wrote: post #2

I think if a startup has spent a bunch of time building a product without considering who should use it and how they should reach those people then they're pretty fundamentally isolated from the industry they wish to service. Steve Blank's not saying the other 90% were good ideas.

Good point, there are a lot of bad ideas out there. But, even the best ideas/products are not what they started out as, they involved pivots and market changes. Was this due to luck, or were the founders fundamentally committed to creating a business that adds value vs. simply in love with their "great idea"?

I like to think successful founders "got there" pivoting or otherwise, by being good at bringing a product to market and building a company around it.

Startups that need to as ef4 put it "outsource the hard stuff" are pretty much proven bad at bringing a product to market, I don't think it's likely their problems will be as simple as customer development vs. being underprepared, inexperienced or just plain unsuitable to found companies.

Re: Ask HN: Product/Market Fit (Customer Dev) as a Service?

#9

Post by ed209 »

ef4 wrote: post #3

Your proposal sounds like a wish-fulfillment fantasy for founders who want to skip the hard part. I'm skeptical that you could generalize the process. But even if you could, it wouldn't make any sense to offer it as a service to startup founders, because you would then control the biggest value creation step. They would be nothing but idea sources, and ideas are worth very little. Instead you would just use your fant…

I don't think it should be about skipping the (or one of) the hard parts. It should be about guidance through it and helping founders understand how to read the signals coming in. Some startups think they're doing it, but they're really not.

A service to push founders through it would be great.

Re: Ask HN: Product/Market Fit (Customer Dev) as a Service?

#10

Post by MCRed »

1. YES!

2. Well this seems like one of those questions you could always say yes to. "Do you think you should have saved more money in your 20s?" "Do you think you should have worked out more over the past 5 years?" Who isn't going to say yes?

That being said, the failure of our business came about because the business model of the market we were serving shifted, as a result of a new piece of technology. Our customers didn't anticipate this shift (customers don't know what they want until they see it in some cases) and we, when the other business model came about, didn't recognize its significance. So, alas, I don't think customer development would have helped because nobody had invented the thing that killed us at the time we would have been doing customer development.

3. YES! I would love to buy a customer development as a service type service. Part of the problem for me is that customer development is sometimes very hard, it's not always easy to identify the customers for a particular idea.

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