Imagine this – Your startup at launch got a handful of users who are ”innovators”.
You are moving further and saw that the users you are dealing with now are “early visionaries”. Later, after you with ease jumped over the chasm, you found yourself living and talking with “early majority”. And again, one small jump and you are pleasantly in the midst of “late majority”. One nice transition and even “laggards” becoming your good friends. Every one loves you – you are famous, rich and respected. Plea of “Airport’s business books” – to never give in in dreaming of building a great company and product – worked for you well! Very nice and happy story.
But life full of things that you don’t want to hear and my late experience forced me to agree with Steve Blank who was saying – “most startups [Alek: companies] fail because they didn’t develop their market [Alek: customers], not because the didn’t develop their product”.
I will share some of my observations of a common pitfalls of untested assumptions and the blisses of work with the tested hypotheses and validated knowledge. Value of this session is heard story that is “easy to retell” and will covered practical tools critical for success and useful for organisation of any size – startup or enterprise.