Customer Development, project planning, product prototyping

1. Customer Development
Project Phases
Simplified

2. Customer Discovery
Customer 1
 Objective: Survey potential
customers for proposed products
being developed.
 1. Customer engagement-
continuous polling of customer
requirements and features/benefits
 2. Product development-continuous
iteration of product development
features based upon the proposed Product Features Benefits
value proposition of the product
offering
 Customer needs criteria
 Repeatable customer attributes
 Preliminary strategy of product
configurations
 Preliminary sales strategy for first
customers.
Without dots

3. Customer Validation
Customer 1
• Objective: Rapidly develop
minimum feature set for customer
product presentations, utilize
customer product evaluations for
rapid product prototype changes.
• Describe minimal product feature
goals for repeatable and scalable
business model
• Determine customer profiles for
Criteria Strengths Comparison to Competitors
early adopter customers. weaknesses
• Accomplish rapid prototype 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
changes from customer product
surveys and evaluations. Repeat
product iterations until a
repeatable customer profile is
accomplished.

4. Customer Creation
Customer 1
 Objective: Increase customer
demand by filling the sales pipeline
through promotion, advertising,
marketing and product evaluations.
 Marketing strategy and
methodology for reaching
customer’s profile.
 Budget for marketing. Estimated
marketing cost for customer to
purchase product.

5. Company Building
Customer 1
 Objective: Scale product production
for first customer ship. Hire
employees to ramp up sales and
production. Establish product
production capability.
 Establish strategy for production
ramp up
 Estimated scale volume increase for
first 2 quarters
 Required equipment resources.
Factory ramp up equipment $ 00
Budget # for product Qty ___
Engineering per revision ___
Travel $ 00
Employee Costs $ 00
Production $ 00
Marketing $ 00
Total Ramp up for 6 months $ 00

6. Customer Development Prototype and Sales Budget
Customer Customer Customer Company
Discovery Stop
Validation
Stop
Creation
Stop
Building
Product/
Business Model driven market fit Market Type driven
Pivot * Lessons start
Learned © Steve Blank 2003 http://steveblank.com
A.
B.
C.
Budget for Discovery Budget for Validation Budget for Creation
Prototyping $ 00 Prototyping $ 00 Prototyping $ 00
Budget # of prototypes* ___ Budget # of prototypes* ___ Low scale factory budget ___
Engineering per revision ___ Engineering per revision ___ Engineering changes ___
Travel $ 00 Travel $ 00 Travel $ 00
Office $ 00 Office $ 00 Office $ 00
Employee Costs $ 00 Employee Costs $ 00 Employee Costs $ 00
Cost per Pivot $ 00 Cost per Pivot $ 00 Marketing $ 00
Total Discovery Budget $ 00 Total Validation Cost $ 00 Cost per product $ 00
Creation $ 00