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How to develop your customers like you develop your product

• dmix 18y ago
  His talk at Stanford was excellent. Business school always teaches you to be customer-focused but its so easy to lose sight of what that actually means.
• ojbyrne 18y ago
  I guessed from the title that it was going to be associated with that book. Its a really good read, and the best thing that's come from Marc Andreesen's blog. Highly recommended.
• curiousgeorge 18y ago
  Perhaps someone could share the idea. Video files don't work for a lot of (text-oriented) surfers, and it would be useful not to have to read the book to know if it is any good..
  • ojbyrne 18y ago
    Because its about marketing, its hard to capture the ideas without sounding trite and simplistic. Basically keep your burn rate low while "developing" your market. And that "developing" your market is an iterative process of basically trying things, getting customer feedback, trying more things informed by that feedback, repeat until you find a viable market. In other words, just as you would iterate your product development (always with the possibility of going back to the start) you should do the same with your market development. Don't be afraid to fail. Some of the nicer points from the video (in my opinion): * 90% of startups fail not because of technological barriers but because they fail to find and develop their market. * Too many startups try to imitate the corporate structure of larger companies - acting like the company they want to grow up to be - rather than having a corporate structure that suits their stage of growth. * He recommends having a "market development" group rather than the typical VP/Sales, VP/Marketing structure.