Good luck! It's never fun to read about a young startup closing its doors, but I'm sure you'll do great things with these experiences. A quick question: I've b

Good luck! It's never fun to read about a young startup closing its doors, but I'm sure you'll do great things with these experiences. A quick question: I've been reading a lot about the theory of customer development lately (mostly via Eric Ries's blog and The Four Steps to the Epiphany). I know hindsight is 20/20, and I apologize in advance if it sounds like I'm just rubbing salt in your wounds, but I'd love to know what you think about this... It sounds like your experience is a good example of a company that might have benefited by putting as much effort into finding the initial customers as in product development. Working closely with these earlyvangelists from the start might have helped you learn whether the product being built solves real pain points and to learn how and to what extent these earlyvangelists would be able to deploy the product internally. I personally think it would be very difficult to do anything but build product in the three months leading up to demo day. The time it would take to locate and engage potential customers seems mammoth. Perhaps the product delivered on demo day is used to secure additional funding, and then as the demo product used to find market fit. Anyway, I'm no expert in this stuff, which is why I'd really like to know your thoughts. Best of luck with your next company!