The Real Reason We Don’t Do Customer Development: Fear

June 9, 2010 | View Comments

FearIt’s hard to argue against going through the Customer Development Process (CDP) when building your startup. It just makes sense and experienced entrepreneurs are really excited about it. If you want to learn more, I recommend starting with Steve Blank’s Four Steps to Epiphany and Eric Reis’s Lessons Learned blog.

But, despite reading the books, the blogs, going to the meetups and truly believing in CDP, most of us don’t do it and our startups fail. We come up with some practical excuses:

  • We don’t have the time for it.
  • I already know what our customers want.
  • We can’t convince customers to meet with us without a real prototype.
  • We’re not ready yet.

These are BS reasons. The real reason is we’re afraid. We don’t want to grab someone from craigslist and have them tell us our idea is dumb. We don’t want a potential customer at a big company to laugh at our idea. We quit our job for the idea. We have risked our savings. Our professional credibility is on the line. We’ve convinced people to be part of our team.  Their livelihoods and their families are counting on us. What if people tell us they don’t like our idea? I’m not sure we can handle that kind of feedback/rejection.

So, what do we do?  We close our eyes, build the product and launch it. Hopefully, when we finally open our eyes, we find people using it. Most of the time, people aren’t using it and we’re in big trouble. It’s reckless and not fair to our team, our investors and our family.

How do we overcome that fear? We have to convince ourselves of two critical points (the most experienced entrepreneurs have successfully done this):

  • Our initial idea isn’t worth much. If our initial idea isn’t worth much, where’s the value?  The value is in the team. More specifically, the value lies in our ability to continually adjust that initial idea based on feedback from potential customers and morph it into something that people need. If we’re not doing that, we’re not creating value and our startups are relying on luck to succeed.
  • Changing our idea isn’t inconsistent, it’s smart. Our society rewards people for being consistent.  When people aren’t consistent, our society punishes them (e.g., politicians get negatively labeled as “flip flops” for being inconsistent). In the startup world, we don’t have to be consistent.  We should be willing to dramatically change our views based on what we learn. We have to overcome that instinctual urge to remain consistent.

So, lets stop coming up with excuses for why we aren’t meeting with customers.  Face our fears and get out there and start learning what’s wrong with our ideas and figuring out how to fix it.

(photo via Scott Ableman)

  • I agree with you that fear is a bigggggg insidious factor at play here (and with theschaz on being aware of who you should be talking to -- it might be "everyman" but it might not). Hope things are going well over there for you and Jim.
  • Insidious is definitely a good way to describe it. Things are going well and hope all is well with you, too.
  • Customer development is a skill all of its own. When I started, it was awkward, but with time it got a lot better. With time your ability to ask questions improves and before you know it you'll be excited for the next customer.

    I think there is a difference between customer development and talking to random people (via Craig's List). Customer development works best when the people you're talking to have the problem you're trying to solve. Random people might not have your problem, they wouldn't be in your target market.

    With that said, you can learn a lot from people who aren't in your target market, especially when it comes to usability.
  • Great points. You should definitely test out your idea with your target customer. It takes skill to do it successfully. But, first you need the courage to do it at all.
  • Yea, I agree. It's really not that big of a deal to start. I know that's easy to type, but it's true.

    Once you start, amazing things will happen. You'll talk to a bunch of people and you'll start to see a pattern. Let's say you identify something that needs to be changed. After you've changed it, and you start talking to people again, the issue could be solved.

    You'll know if it's solved or not because the people you're talk to aren't having that issue anymore. Plus, you'll have learned something about your market, which helps you make better decisions later.
  • I think you're just a more confident person. For some of the people I've met (and me in the beginning), it was really hard to start and very easy to dismiss after a few tries.
  • Maybe, maybe not. If I was giving someone advice about starting customer development, I'd tell them to write down some questions, talk with 10 people and take notes.

    You'll probably be nervous, it will feel awkward, and you might not think it's useful; don't judge yourself or the process until you've talked to 10 people. (Talking to 10 people should take days, not weeks.)

    Starting is rough, it's like public speaking, but once you get going, you really do feel more comfortable and you'll learn so much about your product, people and market.
  • This post and comments thread are great. I consider myself a believer of CDP but I find myself thinking the same excuses that Vinny mentions.

    @theschnaz I like a lot your advice. Now my question is: Do you start asking questions with a prototype or with an idea/mockups?
  • I feel like you can never start asking questions early enough.
  • Start with whatever you have. Sometimes I test new ideas for Hapnin.com by taking screenshots, editing them, then linking 3 or 4 HTML pages together.

    Think about it this way, instead of using your time writing comments to me, you could be setting up meetings with people from craig's list. Talk to them, you'll learn so much more.
  • That's great advice to not judge yourself or the process.
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