How Startups Build Products That Customers Will Pay For
Six steps to establishing a successful customer-driven build process
Why are some of the simplest products successful while more complex products never find traction?
It’s actually kinda easy to build products your customers will love, you just have to let your customers build your products for you. Simple enough, right?
But while every expert will tell you to listen to your customers and build what they want, none of those experts stick around for when you’ve done exactly that and those same customers aren’t buying what you’ve built for them.
In 20 years of growing product-based startups, it took me a while to learn that when you’re building your product, a sharp knife is good, a Swiss Army knife is bad. Your customers will tell you, loudly and often, that they want the Swiss Army knife, and the more tools on it the better.
That’s going to lead to failure. Here’s how to establish a customer-driven build process without drowning your company in complexity.
Why the customer is (almost) always right
When I first started out as an entrepreneur, I had the young-person’s mindset aligned with that Henry Ford quote: “If I had asked…
