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Am I nervous? Heck yeah! Steve’s the God Father of CD and known for being brutally honest. All we can do is tell our story with as much passion and honesty as possible.

If you’re new to Customer Development or Lean Startup, be sure to read Steve Blanks blog, or his book: Four Steps to the Epiphany.

Last month in Boston I got to speak with a groups of statrups about Customer Development and the best feedback I got was “get straight to the stories, don’t focus on the mechanics … tell us what YOU did it - not how to do it.”. So with that feedback fresh in my mind, our talk next week will be 100% story based.

The 7 personal stories on Customer Development / Lean Startup I’ll be talking about:

1. Customer Developement (CD) is freakin’ hard.
2. Focus on the problem, not the solution.
3. Don’t solve problems you’re not passionate about.
4. Being good at sales is a bad thing.
5. You need thick skin to do it right.
6. Stop geeking out on the numbers.
7. Pivoting to perfection (again, problem not solution)

Interested in stopping by? Learn how here.

Are you implementing Customer Development / Lean Startup processes in your startup? If so, what have you learned?

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———-

If you’re a startuper or marketer in Boston I’d like to invite you to join us this week at Performable’s 3rd Customer Development Lunch, this Tuesday (January 26th, 2010) at 12:30pm.

We’ll be welcoming serial entrepreneur and fellow marketing metrics geek Dan Martell to Boston. Dan is a canadian entrepreneur now residing in Silicon Valley; he is the co-founder of FlowTown a social email discovery platform.

Our first Customer Development Lunch featured our Advisor, Sean Ellis, and was graciously hosted and sponsored by Spark Capital. Our second lunch featured Jonathan Mendez and was hosted by our friends at Compete and sponsored by Charles River Ventures. This lunch with Dan Martell will be hosted by our friends at TechStars Boston and sponsored by Performable.

Please register on EventBrite if you can attend this Tuesday: Customer Development Lunch with Dan Martell.

———-

Originally posted at Making something from nothing by David Cancel

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In the race for relevancy, could 2010 be the year that SEO is forced to relinquish its organic search throne to give way to the power of search filtered through and against the social graph + geo?

I think so. Here’s why:

Twitter on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)

A few weeks ago, Google started testing real-time Twitter search results. That got me ‘hmmm-ing’ like crazy.

If what I saw is what there is, wow. This thing is sooooo easy to game.  Check this out: Let’s say I’m looking for a new dentist. Do I really care about conversations about dentists, from dentists or dentistry in general? No, not really. But what if I could geo-filter those same conversations? Okay, that’s more interesting. Now what if I could add a second filter to these same conversations, only this time showing only those tweeple I’m following on Twitter? Ahhh ….

Are you hmm-ing, too? Now let’s take a look at this …

Social Graph Recommendations

With over 350 million Facebook users and growing, there’s a pretty good chance you have a ton of Facebook friends just a click away. With these incredible numbers, how long do you think Facebook will wait before it announces the complete revamp of its anemic search engine and launches brand-new, totally pumped search engine functionality that will make Google a little weak in the cyber knees? Perhaps it already is. Google’s recent integration of Twitter into its results is evidence of ‘first-strike’ thinking.

So ask yourself – when the search playing field finally becomes level in the not-so-distant future, which engine will be your first choice for research: Facebook or Google?

GEO the Evolution of Local Search

In a tightly woven global world, people still care most their needs at home. It’s the main reason consumers have stubbornly held onto their big yellow phone books, despite all the bells and whistles of Google and its SE brethren. When your toilet stops working, you need a local plumber. When your roof has a leak, you need a local roofer. GEO search technology? Of course! And its where EVERYONE is throwing money and lots of it.

Google Sidewiki

Love it or hate it (and most site owners seem to be crowding into the thumbs-down corner. That includes me, too.), there’s no doubt in my mind that Sidewiki’s ability to allow comments, rants, etc. adjacent to specific sites was done with an eye toward affecting overall search, perhaps even PageRank. By offering yet another way for people to comment and engage in the same space smells like another not-so-thinly-veiled strike against Facebook.

The power of social recommendation certainly isn’t new. Anytime we ask a friend to make a recommendation about anything – a new restaurant, a physician, an awesome new WordPress plugin – we’re using the power of relationship-based word of mouth (WOM). What’s different now, and incredibly exciting, is our ability to expand WOM beyond physical borders, time zones and even face-to-face personal relationships.

Today, everyone is a friend or a potential friend. Wow.

Add the quick hit of Google Adwords, Google Local 10 Pack, and a niche platform sites like Yelp (which Google is negotiating to buy for something like half-a-billion dollars, or maybe not.) Oodle and the upcoming Gowalla & FourSquare turf war (my bet’s on Gowalla) and with startups like SimpleGEO, there’s no doubt that the future of search will change. In fact, it already is. It has to. When you combine the search filter through the Social Graph and add GEO for recommendations, what you deliver are vetted results people will use and trust. Elegant. Simple. Completely awesome.

Note: I originally wrote this on ShoeMoney.com as a guest post. It includes concepts and ideas that are changing the way businesses will engage customers and I wanted to insure my readers had read it.

How do you see the way businesses are communicating with their customers due to new social networks and data?

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Benefits of sending update emails

• Have you’re advisers solve problems for you
• No surprises, surprises are bad
• Let your advisers celebrate your successes
• Good news will go farther [lets us promote you!]

Best format and frequency

• Put your most important challenges at the top
• Short and sweet
• Make it “Skimable” [bullets!]
• Every 3 weeks (or if there’s any major issues news).

Other Tips

• Share your Google Analytics
• Run semi-annual advisory dinners (Thx @msuster)

COPY/PASTE

===================================
+ Top 3 Challenges
+ Metrics
+ Whats New / In The News
===================================

> Top 3 Challenges
1. Getting Press
2. Hiring Biz Dev
3. Building Sales Team

> Metrics
1. Revenue / Target
2. Return Usage / Retention

> Whats New / In The News
1. [Source] - [Title] [Shortend URL]
2. Hired Rails Programmer (@username)
3. New Customer - Fortune 500 company

===================================

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I want to take this moment to appreciate YOU and recognize your worth, importance and value.

It’s because of you that I get to do what I’m here to do and live my WHY.

And during this holiday season, take a moment to recognize YOUR OWN worth, importance and value.

I really appreciate the fact that you’re my reader.

And if you’re a customer then I really REALLY appreciate you!

Thanks for making 2009 a great year. Let’s work together and make 2010 an even better one.

Have an awesome holidays season.

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Below are 9 similarities that I identified throughout the run.  If you have any other example, please let me know by leaving a comment below.

1) You need to set goals

If you’re doing a startup, you’ve probably set some goals (revenues, customers, product) .  For a first time marathoner (as I was) the only goal you should make is the date your going to run, and that you’ll finish no matter what.  Many people say they’ll run one someday, I say pick a date and commit. Set that goal today.

2) The beginning is always the best part

Isn’t starting a new company fun? You get to figure out the domain, design a logo, strategize about the business model - no problem.  The start of the race (for me, the first 18miles) had the same feeling, it was exciting lining up, I kept a good pace and had no issues.  Then things started to change, pains / cramps / a bit of dehydration.  I smiled as I thought how startups shared this same feeling.

3) It’s always easier with support

For most startups, it’s your co-founder - maybe for others its your advisory board, or business coach. Either way, having support from someone makes the journey more enjoyable.  That’s what I loved best about the people cheering us on all through out the run, then again the group that formed just before the finish line.  I always picked up the pace as I ran past these people ;-).

4) The prep-work will have a huge impact

There’s nothing like doing market research before entering an industry to understand how you’re going to compete, and the same goes for a marathon. Do your homework, figure out your training regimen and stick to it.  All the prep work you do before will have a huge impact on your results.

5) Things you don’t expect to go wrong, will.

For the longest time, I’ve had knee issues from an accident when I was a teenager.  I’ve been worried that it would act up during the race, but the funny thing is that my knee wasn’t what ended up causing me troubles.  Instead it was my hips, my right foot and my back tightening up.  All things I had no ideas would cause me discomfort.  Startups are the same way - shit happens.  Things you don’t expect to go wrong will, and it’s how you deal with them that decides if you win or loose.

6) You need to have fun

Startups are awesome because you can have fun even when times are tough - because sometimes you just need to smile.  Marathons are no different.  At mile 23.5 I came up to an aid station in pain, and m-a-n was I SORE .. so I smiled to the guy next to me and said “Wow, this is pretty hard, eh?” smiling.. cause I thought it was a funny thing to say. He looked at me confused and answer “of course it is.” - either way, I laughed.  Sometimes when things are tough, you just need to laugh and have some fun - just keep pushing forward and enjoy the journey.

7) You’re crazy just to think you can do it.

Only 1/10th of a percent of the population will run a marathon. Why? Because it’s freakin’ hard! Mentally and physically. Some that try, don’t finish, and many that do, complete with injury.  Startups are no different. The failure rate is high, the odds are against you - but still we do them. We must be a little bit crazy, right? I think so ;-).

8 ) Running out of money (water) is very bad!

Either you stop at Aid stations along the way, or you stock water and food as needed.  A typical marathoner burns 4000+ calories during the run, and much like a startup you need to insure you have resources available throughout the startup. Typically this is capital and/or customers.  Be sure to plan for both, if you run out, you’ll fail.

9) It’s a mental game

Others have talked about the Entrepreneurial Pendulum, or the Emotional Rollercoaster in doing a startup, and I would suggest that running a marathon is no different.  At the beginning you’ll feel great, then things start to hurt, and eventually its unpleasant, with moments of traction (it gets better for while).  You find a rhythm, only to slow down when it just hurts too much (but you don’t stop!).  That’s how startups feel sometimes - it’s mostly mental, a competition against your thoughts.  Were all capable of way more than we give ourselves credit for.

You don’t get what you want, you get what you believe.

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Run. Run. Hit. Run. Hit. Hit. Run -> End Zone!

We get hit - stuff doesn’t work out - yet we keep pushing forward.  The only time you stop is if you give up (i.e. knee touches the ground).

Note: Personal story about Flowtown below

Pivots

A product pivot is like taking a hit and changing directions.  The idea is better described here using a basketball analogy - but I think it’s more than that. To me, It’s the equivelent of taking a hit (no product traction) and spinning (product pivot) to find another path at the end-zone (product market fit).

Customers Development

Created by Steve Blank allows startups to follow a methodology that should, in essence, reduce the amounts of time “hits” you need to take, to reach the end-zone (touchdown! [insert dance]).

Different Types of “Pivots”

I believe 2 types of “pivots” exist. Customer Development (feedback) led pivots, and Vision (management) led pivots. Arguably, the vision led pivots may have started by customer feedback - but it’s not so obvious on the outside. [again, I have no proof, other then what I have read].

Here are some examples:

Customer Development Pivots

• YouTube: Video Dating Site -> Video Site (/w Embed Feature)
• Flickr: Massive Multiplayer Online Game -> Photos (USA Today Story)
• Rapleaf: Reputation Engine -> Customer Insight for Marketers
• Imeem:
• Nintendo: Trading cards -> Electronic games
• Spokeo.com (feed reader for your friend to people search) http://www.techcrunch.com/tag/spokeo/
• tailrank -> spinn3r (consumer media company to b2b service provider)

Vision Led Pivots

• PotBelly Sandwich Company (Antique shop -> Sandwiches)
• TwitVid.com (Read below)
• Wikipedia: Life begans as nupedia, and vison led pivot to wikipedia.
• Berkshire Hathaway: Cotton mills to investments
• Pixar: Pixar Image Computer -> Animation Studio
• Apple: macs -> ipods -> iphones -> itablets (? I liked it, not 100% sure)
• .. and many tech startups {You know who you are, yes I’m talking about you. It’s all good - but recognize}

If you still want more, read: Surprising first products of 14 famous companies

Story: www.OneRiot.com

Two years ago, they launched as Med.ium - a browser plugin to allow you to view what your friends where navigating online in realtime - which they eventually pivoted to a real time search engine.

Listen to Kimbal Musk (Founder) talk about the pivot (@kimbal)

Story: www.twitvid.com

Adil Lalani (Co-Founder) via email: “Pivoting is something we’ve been doing for quite some time (although we never called it a “pivot”). So one example is my company: EatLime.com switching to TwitVid.com. Here’s an article that briefly talks about our switch to twitvid: Twitter Hype Trickle-Down Provides Boost To TwitVid ( btw that valuation in the article is old. )”

Our Pivot: Flowtown.com

We thought we were listening to the market, but we realized there was a HUGE difference between what we thought people wanted, and what they were willing to $ pay for (= how we measure traction).  We had 700+ registered accounts, however, only a small percent converted to paid accounts (very small).

Long story short. We threw out 3.5 months of code (video), built a new solution www.flowtown.com and brought it to market (pivot).

The results: 11,063.35% increase in revenue in our first month. That should tell you how bad it was before ;-).

Conclusion

• Decide what traction means to you.
• Do Customer Development (CD) (or whatever you choose to call it)
• Don’t be afraid to change directions (a.k.a pivot)
• Don’t drop your knee [quit]. Ever!

P.S. For the record, doing a pivot doesn’t always work. Just saying.

P.P.S Thanks to the following peeps who provided insight to the examples above.

Jon Boutelle, Co-Founder of Slideshare.net

Jason Calacainis, Founder of Mahalo + ThisWeekInStartups.com

James Sherrett, Founder & CEO AdHack

Jon Bischke, Founder of EduFire

Marcus Nelson, Salesforce.com

Richard Mordini - Javaelin VP

Helen Zhu, Founder of Chictopia

Raj Gajwani

Christiaan Vorkink - True Ventures

Jonathan Abrams, Founder of Socializr, Friendster

John Anderson, CEO of GroupCard

Joshua Brewer, SocialCast.com

Steve Jang

Garry Tan, Co-Founder of Posterous

Arjun Dev Arora, Founder of ReTargeter

Rodney Carvalho, Founder of ScrumNinja

Julien Genestoux, Founder of SuperFeedr

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Posted via web from Dan’s posterous

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