An overview of our approach to Customer Development and why it's a critical component of taking new products to market

1. OVERVIEW OF
CUSTOMER
DEVELOPMENT

2. INNOVATE
BETTER
YouTeam is an innovation lab and a
professional startup consultancy run
by startup founders.
We utilise agile development
and lean methodology.
More than anything, we rely on great
people and collaboration.

3. CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT IS
A FOUR-STEP FRAMEWORK:
Customer
Discovery
Problem-
Solution Fit
Proposed
MVP
Proposed
Funnel(s)
Customer
Validation
Product-
Market Fit
Business
Model
Sales &
Marketing
Roadmap
Customer
Creation
Scale
Execution
Company
Building
Scale
Organization
Scale
Operations
pivot

4. CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT
IS A FRAMEWORK FOR:
1. Discovering and validating the right market for your idea
2. Building the right product features that solve customers’
needs
3. Testing the correct model and tactics for acquiring and
converting customers, and deploying the right
organisation and resources to scale the business
At a high level, Customer Development is about
questioning your core business assumptions.

5. WHAT HAPPENS IF WE SKIP
CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT?
(click below for Boo.com Case Study)

6. STEP 1 of CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT
IS ‘CUSTOMER DISCOVERY’
The goal of Customer Discovery
is just what the name implies:
• Finding out who the customers for your product are
and whether the problem you believe you are solving
is important to them.
• Discovering whether the problem, product and
customer hypotheses in your business plan are
correct.
To do this, you need to leave guesswork behind and get “outside
the building” in order to learn what the high-value customer
problems are, what it is about your product that solves these
problems, and who specifically are your customers and users.

7. CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT
PROCESS
Insanely Great Idea
Create (or modify)
hypothesis:
I belive [type of people]
experience [type of problem]
when doing [type of task].
Find people Did you find
people?
Interview
them
Did interviews
validate
hypothesis?
Have existing
customers?
Build
something
Adapt customer
development
Incremental
learning
(optional)
No
Yes
No
Yes No
Yes

8. CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
2-4 weeks
6. Conduct interview with relevant
questions for this stage of customer
development
2. Develop a list of the 3 –
10 most important questions
3. Develop engagement
materials for the Customer
Development trials
5. Configure User Experience
Research Platform
1. Brainstorm Customer
and Market Based Risks
8. Customer Development
Reporting
4. Recruit Users from the
Initial Target Audience
7. Iterate Question Set
as more is learnt

9. PARALLEL PRODUCT
DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
The first step of Customer Development, often
referred to as Customer Discovery, can be
undertaken in parallel to:
• UX Wireframe refinement
• UI Development
• MVP Map / Scope Refinement
• Other forms of Prototyping

10. MAIN OUTCOMES OF
CUSTOMER DISCOVERY
• Clarifying how the Problem relates to the
proposed Solution
• Reduced resource utilisation on later steps
by minimising abortive works associated by
misunderstanding the market
• Significantly accelerating the learning
process on the path to commercialisation
• Ability to discover customer and market
risks and de-risk the business model
systemically
• Creation of Customer Representative Group