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Customer Development is probably best for Enterprise level applications where you can speak with the head of a 100-person team and get an answer for everyone el

Customer Development is probably best for Enterprise level applications where you can speak with the head of a 100-person team and get an answer for everyone else. For consumer applications, however, you can ask 1000 inidviduals and get a "No" while your product could still be helpful to 4 million others. For example when I ask my friends to switch from Yahoo Mail to Gmail they usually answer "What does Gmail do that Yahoo doesn't?" or "This is fine for me". EDIT: What if Twitter followed a customer development model? They probably would not have written a single line of code.

imp 17y ago
Regarding your edit, I don't think that the Cust. Dev. proponents say that it's the only way to develop products, but on average it will help you succeed. It also seems like Twitter used some concepts that CD also suggests. With such a simple product, they probably stayed at the MVP stage for a long time.
trapper 17y ago
"For consumer applications, however, you can ask 1000 inidviduals and get a "No" while your product could still be helpful to 4 million others." You are asking the wrong people then. CD just saved you a huge amount of heartache, by not trying to market to the wrong segment.
- rokhayakebe 17y ago
  Le's say you are twitter founder pre-1st-line-of-code, who do you ask?
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - trapper 17y ago
    Whoever you have identified as fitting your hypothesis on early adopters. It's not rocket science.
    - KC8ZKF 17y ago
      So you ask the people who are most likely to give you the answer you want to hear.
      - trapper 17y ago
        That's the point. What are you missing? If the people you think you are going to market to don't think your product idea is good, then you have nothing.
wensing 17y ago
Just to be clear--with customer development, you don't ask customers for your vision. That's still the founders responsibility. So yes, I think @ev and @jack would have still written code. They would have then asked people (not laggards, but people they already think might be interested) if their MVP has legs.

imp 17y ago

Regarding your edit, I don't think that the Cust. Dev. proponents say that it's the only way to develop products, but on average it will help you succeed. It also seems like Twitter used some concepts that CD also suggests. With such a simple product, they probably stayed at the MVP stage for a long time.

trapper 17y ago

"For consumer applications, however, you can ask 1000 inidviduals and get a "No" while your product could still be helpful to 4 million others." You are asking the wrong people then. CD just saved you a huge amount of heartache, by not trying to market to the wrong segment.

rokhayakebe 17y ago
Le's say you are twitter founder pre-1st-line-of-code, who do you ask?
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- trapper 17y ago
  Whoever you have identified as fitting your hypothesis on early adopters. It's not rocket science.
  - KC8ZKF 17y ago
    So you ask the people who are most likely to give you the answer you want to hear.
    - trapper 17y ago
      That's the point. What are you missing? If the people you think you are going to market to don't think your product idea is good, then you have nothing.

wensing 17y ago

Just to be clear--with customer development, you don't ask customers for your vision. That's still the founders responsibility. So yes, I think @ev and @jack would have still written code. They would have then asked people (not laggards, but people they already think might be interested) if their MVP has legs.