You know you're supposed to "solve customer pain points" with your product, but what exactly does that mean? You've heard of Steve Blank and his Customer Development concepts but you're still a little bit lost how to apply it to the problem you want to solve. You have a technology you want to commercialize but you don't know who wants to buy it or at what price, or if it even has a chance at sustainability. Sound familiar? These are all common entrepreneurial woes. Rui Ma is trained in teaching customer development through her work with the National Science Foundation and has invested in or advised dozens of early stage companies where she has seen the wonders of Customer Development done right, as well as the common mistakes most people make. Join her for a pre-Academy session and bring your questions!

1. Customer Development
(Really, Customer Discovery)
Rui Ma, September 10, 2018

2. Housekeeping
- Slack is open!
- There are many channels … let us know if you can only see a few
- Calendar invites
- Zoom issues??
- Everything is recorded!!
- Questions??
- Paola@ttacademy.co
- Slack

3. About Rui
- Grew up in Silicon Valley
- Grew up with tech: parents were engineers, majored in EECS at Berkeley
- Work: tech investment banking, private equity, and seed / accelerator
- Advisor: a few startups, accelerators (Zeroth, UNICEF)
- Nonprofits: Rookie.fund, TTA
- Education: EMBA, Education, Psychology (ongoing)
- Goal in life: Writing. ??
- Meditate, run, vegetarian
- Will be mentoring a lot of you!
- Today’s session .... based on NSF/Steve Blank, and years of experience
working with startups.

4. Customer Development - In Brief
- You should be solving for a customer problem … not trying to sell your
solution.
- Goals:
- What is the problem?
- Who is experiencing this problem?
- Do I understand the key components for a successful
solution?
- How are they going to pay for it and why?
- Listen.

5. Who is going to use it?
- Customers are people, not companies
- In companies, they should have specific titles and responsibilities
- If individuals, they should have specific traits and other identifying factors

6. How are they going to pay for it?
- It’s really about the chain of decisions that has to happen and what is
involved at each step
- They are usually complex
- Understand time, cost, considerations, alternatives
- Who has to buy in and why?
- What are emotional constraints? Other constraints?

7. Anatomy of an Interview
- Never mention your technology
- If asked, just let them know that they have to wait, you are working on “something related”
- It’s about understanding the customer’s frustrations
- It’s an interview. Ask questions and listen!
- No leading questions. NEVER discuss the technology.
- I’d just like to understand your job / day / experience with … xyz.
- Tell me more.
- How does that work?
- ABSOLUTELY NO SURVEYS. EVER.
- Face to face > phone, but phone is OK, too.
- Always be open-ended. Ask for 15 mins. Get an hour.

8. Example
- Imagine you want to do a coaching platform for people to find coaches
- Do not start off talking about coaching. Talk about the problem you want to solve.
- “I’m interested in your story because I’m working on something that may help people lead
more fulfilled lives / become unstuck in life / xyz.”
- “I’m trying to understand the process. Could you tell me about … ?”
- What have you tried before? Tell me more about why you tried that. How did you find the
solution?
- How did that work out? Why did you stop / continue … ?
- What’s going on now?
Assume that people haven’t thought deeply about the problem and that you need
to probe very deep to get at their insights.

9. Scheduling Interviews
- Strangers >> friends
- LinkedIn. Conferences.
- Creative ways - go to the hospital smoking area. Go to the construction site.
- Be persistent. Be honest.
- Target 100, but only schedule a handful at a time.
- Don’t be deterred by 1 negative feedback, but if there’s 5, consider trying
another segment.
- Always be refining.
- Usually people get really good after 50.
- DON’T SEEK TO VALIDATE. DISCOVER.

10. Do Everything to Avoid Confirmation Bias
In fact, bias towards questions that disprove your need.

11. And Assume You Know Nothing

12. Q&A