More startups fail from a lack of customers than from a failure of product development

this is an awesome presentation - I really recommend anyone that has a product and wants customers read it.

Before I wrote my first line of code for my startup I went and interviewed about 50 regular people. I'd go sit at a train station and grab a guy reading a newspaper, and ask him why he wasn't reading it on his phone.

I'd grab people on the bus or in a queue for groceries on their phone (eg, using it, not talking) and spark up a conversation as to what they're upto.

Most of the time they'd happily give me their phone number after a brief chat, I kept in contact with them all, and rang them once I'd developed my product - quizzed them what I thought and so on.

I have another 100 or so users from Mechanical Turk about my product market that I've been too busy to analyze properly.

also, here is a podcast by stephen blank that a friend just recommended http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2048

This is a really great presentation. It seems to go along with the idea of releasing early and often. I've never really been comfortable or understood sales. In school my only few real experiences in sales was selling some product for some benefit or fundraiser.From that, I got the idea that successful selling required convincing some unknown person that the finished product solved their specific needs that I was basically unaware of. So it was pretty much a numbers game, more attempts mean more money.

I like the idea of a product development cycle where the customers and users are shaping the product. I also really like the idea that I can easily validate a product concept by seeing if the people advising me would actually buy in to demo. This presentation has helped me feel more comfortable with the process of successful product development and sales.

And more startups fail from a lack of money than from a lack of product development.

Do you have data to back this up?