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

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

#11

Post by MCRed »

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…

Writing software can be hard, certainly coming up with solutions to difficult problems is hard.

IDEs are a tool that are a relatively recent invention that makes a lot of this easier.

But nobody would say that IDEs are doing the "hard work".

I don't think a CDaaS App could be sentient enough to do all the hard work.

But that doesn't mean there aren't tools and services that could be very useful.

For instance, if someone curated a massive list of customers who were interested in hearing about and talking about new products, with a chance to try them out if they get built, and that service was rented out as a CDaaS to startups to quickly identify potential customers with particular interests or in particular markets.... that would be extremely valuable.

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

#12

Post by 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.

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

#13

Post by jwillgoesfast »

guybrushT wrote: post #6
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. I…

> "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."

Pretty much agree with everything you said, this is a good unpacking of what I was trying to briefly convey in the OP.

For example, if one of the founders is strong in Biz Dev, then they probably don't need this (though some level of assistance would still be helpful), but if this is not the case, then getting guidance and potentially full-service assistance with an all-in effort in gaining customer feedback in a valid way that could be just the frequency shift that determined success or failure in an otherwise solid product/idea.

Basically you would be taking the product from something potential customers respond with "maybe" into something they say "Heck yes, take my money!"

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

#14

Post by zefi »

There is an absurdly high need for this service, but my god this is a hard task. I think the way to do this is spend 6 months working exclusively with about 10 early stage startups (pre PMF) which are relatively similar in the type of market they're going after. You then help them however you think you can in getting to PMF. Keeping the types of markets similar lets you get to actionable learnings quicker; an important learning for a gaming startup isn't going to be as useful for one built on enterprise sales. The help you provide could be customer interviews/sales/lead generation/landing page testing/anything. But the goal is to try and work out which of the tactics lead to the most progress for each startup, then create a playbook that can be applied to the next batch of 10 startups you help. Then as that playbook becomes more refined you slowly start to productise some of these services to speed up the process and add more startups to each batch. Then a few years down the line you have a low touch software product that will take founders through each of the steps you have worked out are most useful for startups operating in their type of market. This is a slow process for sure, but I think to be successful at this you have to acknowledge how broad the problem is and how little you know how to solve it right now.

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

#15

Post by vishalchandra »

Wow ! I think it is great to see the comments on this thread. Thanks jwillgoesfast for asking this question.

I have actually been working on building a Product/Market Fit (Customer Dev) as Service product for the last 12 months and before that I had been advising (mostly on shaping up ideas to get the product definition right) / helping out two new startup teams every month, for about 7 years now. This happened primarily because I enjoy meeting startups and because I was part of a large alumni network which would reach out.

The key assumption for the P/M-F service is whether something like this can be scalable and work in a self-serve mode (i.e. where I am not in the room)

So I have kept iterating on the framework, took inputs from the founders I had advised in the past. My key question to them was "How did I help you even though I was not really a expert in the marketing you were targeting?"

I also conducted lean canvas workshops with startups in US and India (and across sectors including one 7-year old pharma company trying to launch a product) till I could start standardizing (so that it could then be coded into software) the P/M-F process and build a self-serve tool. The tool has now taken the shape of an "intelligent" software which asks startup founders questions and assigns them tasks to do.

There is a lot of complexity in the tool. And it needs to be much more intelligent as well. We have explored using machine learning at the backend, but so far the intelligence is based more on a decision tree structure, rather than any machine learning.

Currently in private alpha, testing with some startups and an accelerator, and will release this soon for others, hopefully by end of this month.

http://www.uberstarter.com

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

#16

Post by apabon21 »

Attended the Chicago Lean Startup Challenge this summer. They push teams to do experiments to determine if their guess/business idea is solving a real need of a customer segment. This 8 week program has saved a lot of companies from building the wrong product and addressing the wrong problem. Watch some of the videos on BuiltinChicago.org to hear how the interview process lead to a major pivot and the start of a company. Summary: Don't built it unless you have done considerable customer interviews and determined A. you are addressing a morphine problem not an aspirin problem and B. The customer base will pay for your solution. Then you build and A/B test. :)

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

#17

Post by jwillgoesfast »

vishalchandra wrote: post #15

Wow ! I think it is great to see the comments on this thread. Thanks jwillgoesfast for asking this question. I have actually been working on building a Product/Market Fit (Customer Dev) as Service product for the last 12 months and before that I had been advising (mostly on shaping up ideas to get the product definition right) / helping out two new startup teams every month, for about 7 years now. This happened prima…

Very cool, Looking forward to seeing how uberStarter grows. I think you have a good model to target incubators and accelerators.

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

#18

Post by jwillgoesfast »

apabon21 wrote: post #16

Attended the Chicago Lean Startup Challenge this summer. They push teams to do experiments to determine if their guess/business idea is solving a real need of a customer segment. This 8 week program has saved a lot of companies from building the wrong product and addressing the wrong problem. Watch some of the videos on BuiltinChicago.org to hear how the interview process lead to a major pivot and the start of a comp…

This. I think the biggest problem startups make is finding a problem and building a solution, but not realizing there is a difference in problem size, value and pain per your medicine analogy.
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