Customer discovery

Creates theories that map the founders' vision for the product with customers (or markets) that will benefit from them.

• Do you understand the problems and needs?
• Do you understand how to solve the problem?

If you know, then you can move on to Customer Validation

It is very important to realize that the customer discovery happens outside the building. The pitfall of Assuming we understand the customer is extremely likely. There is no other option but talking to customers in order to understand what they need. This is the step to apply jobs theory, develop the customer journey, and to identify opportunities.

Also, Founders have a fundamental role in customer discovery, because only they can push forward the process and they have to live it in first-person.

The trigger for product discovery is the founder's vision (sometimes closely related to the product vision) and the customer discovery is used to justify the market thesis (i.e. finding a market where to sell the product).

It is during this stage that the company builds a minimum viable prototype, and a minimum viable product to show to users and understand if there's a match between features and needs.

Importantly, the MVP is addressing the few, not the many. You should focus on building for those early customers who showed interest, and through them you'll find a way of scaling up to a larger pool of users.

Some people call this group the Crazy quilt around a product, some call them earlyvangelist.

The requirements of the earlyvangelists can be met with a minimum viable product.