He imagines that you want to tackle in Internet. Instead of developing a product and seeing if the people use it and buy it: do not you believe that it would be better to ask the people what problem it has really and to do something to solve it?
The Development of Clients or Customer Developement is a skill that some Startups uses to design and testear every part of his business plan. How is this Customer Developement executed it changes according to the type of company. Steve Blank is one of the persons who better has explained this way of creating a startup in his book The four steps to epiphany. Nevertheless his scheme is based on the example of a company desarrolladora of software. Now, Ash Maurya, CEO of WiredReach, has adapted the Blank work to the creation of a Startup of Internet. Bearing in mind that many social entrepreneurs we are taking the network as a basic camp, I believe that it is interesting that we throw an eye.
The first step of Customer Developement is the Discovery of the Clients or Customer Discovery. For a Startup of Internet, the intention of Customer Discovery is to identify the problem that we are going to try to settle, define the suitable viable minimal product that we must construct and testear the business model.
Let's see, considering bird, the flow of clients' discovery and, later, every step separately:
Click to increase the image
1. He writes your hypotheses
Before putting itself to the test what you believe that you know, you have to put it in writing. It is normal starting working and trying to shorten this step but it is a question in fact of an exercise that is worth while. In this paragraph, scarcely there are changes with regard to the raised for Blank. Most of the hypotheses that raises us in his book they fit well in an Internet startup.
2. Put yourself to the test the problem 
In what it refers to Customer Discovery, it continues and there is nothing better than “to go out to the street” Maurya says. In the Internet startups it is usual creating a page of beginning of pre-throwing he gives birth to gather e-mail addresses and to measure the generated interest. Although it is encouraging to have interested users, in little occasions this information serves to know something about the problem that they have and we try to resolve, does not say to us who are, what is what it would be necessary to develop first or how much can recover for it. To insert forms on the beginning pages pre-throwing can be an alternative but debits of that time to ask you if you like refilling these forms …
Really, to construct a good beginning page is difficult. Unless you have a lot of information of your clients or you are your own client, to advance without speaking with the clients is slow and painful since the only thing that you are doing is to put a page along with other one with very little initial traffic for testearlas. Seemingly, to look for the people to have a conversation of 15 minutes with you seems to be a lot of more work, nevertheless it provides more confirmed knowledge than the information that you could start to your web statistics.
During the “Presentation of the Problem” in these conversations, first it synthesizes the three biggest problems and later he is quiet and listens. Ésto is key so that the matter works. And it works because this is not the process for which we want that the clients validate or design a solution based in “the clients do not know what they want”. It works because you are not trying convercerles. On the contrary, they are they those who try to convince you in what his real problem is. When in your conversations someone speaks apasionádamente “about his” the fact is that you have met on the key of the problem.
A way of structuring this “Presentation of the Problem” can be this one:
3. He constructs your MVP1. He states which are three principal problems
2. Ask the client to prioritize these problems and to identify other priority problems
3. It achieves that the client describes you as they solve to today the problem
4. It describes very briefly as you would settle the problem
5. Ask the client what he thinks about your way of solving the problem
6. Ask him if it would use your solution if it was free
7. Ask him if he would pay for her of costing a million euros (and if he says to you that not: ask him how much he would pay!)
8. Ask him to say to you of other persons who might be interested in listening to you
The MVP (Minimum Viable Product) or Viable Minimal Product is the version simpler than you want to do and that allows to put it in funcionamento. The Internet startups need to concentrate on this small set of necessary characteristics to be able to learn of the contributions of his first and most staunch users. After the first confrontation with the reality (reality check), you should have a list of three problems arranged by priority to develop your MVP. Maurya underlines the importance of which the MVP should be something similar to a "demo". According to his criterion, it is difficult that the clients visualize your solution without seeing it. The pantallazos and the mock-ups can serve only if a demonstration version is out of our scope (this is my case, for example).
4. Put yourself to the test your MVP 
With your built MVP, you have to go and it put itself to the test again with your first interviewees and some more that you must add to the list. A way of structuring this “Presentation of the Product” might be the following one:
5. To advance or to Retire1. He affirms the problem
2. It uses the demo to count a history on as your solution solves the problem
3. There proves that thing about again the price that we saw earlier
4. He asks for references of other possible clients
5. It ends with a call to the action: to be discharged or to obtain the commitment to be discharged
The last step in Customer Discovery is the simplest and at the same time the one that needs more honesty with one himself. It is necessary to sum everything learned up and to decide if there has come the moment to advance or to retire.
If we advance, we go on to the following step: Customer Validation or Clients' Ratification … but this will be an object of another post.
Anyway, since you can see, this exposition is interesting not only for Internet entrepreneurs but also for social entrepreneurs who look in the network for the way of starting his projects, since also the social entrepreneurs must look over the viability of what they are trying to construct. The social entrepreneurs, therefore, we must wonder, contrast and re-design the times that are necessary our projects in order to which our emprendimiento solves problems. Problems really.
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