Customer Discovery - Lean Startup Dojo (San Francisco, CA)

The Lean Startup Dojo is a weekly class focused on mastering the skills that you need to successfully build a Lean Startup.

Your startup won't succeed unless you have a deep understanding of your customers and the problem that you are trying to solve for them. Customer Discovery is the process that Lean Startups use to create this understanding. In this class, you will learn how to:

- find your first customers
- convince them to be interviewed by you
- determine if they'll buy your product
- get referrals to other customers

The Lean Startup Dojo places a strong emphasis on creativity and critical thinking. You will generate multiple approaches to solve each problem that your startup will face while executing Customer Discovery. The instructors and other attendees will assist you in analyzing each solution you propose through the lens of the Lean Startup philosophy. When you leave the class, you'll have a wealth of ideas that you can put to use in your startup.

This class will be taught by Rich Collins under the guidance of Eric Ries.

The cost is $100 per class.

via meetup.com

Seriously. This is the best bargain you can get. This class is so under-priced, it will address the skills that you need to get out and talk to customers, includes but not limited to: finding your first customers, convincing them to be interviewed by you, determining if they'll buy your product and getting referrals to other customers. The class is kept to under 10 people, so it will target your own problems.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Customer Validation by Ash Maurya

At the end of Customer Discovery you should have identified a customer problem worth solving and started building your solution (MVP). During Customer Validation, you’ll test your finished MVP by selling it to earlyvangelists and in the process start developing a repeatable and scalable sales process.

via ashmaurya.com

One more great post by Ash Maurya on Customer Validation. Give it a look.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Experiments in lean pricing

I strongly feel that, especially for SaaS products, starting with free and figuring out premium later (all too common) is backwards. If you know you are going to be charging for your product, start by validating if anyone will pay first. There is no better success metric and it leads to less waste in the long run. Focusing on the premium part of freemium first lets you really learn about your unique value proposition — the stuff that will get you paid. You can then come back and intelligently offer a free plan (if you still want to) with more intelligence and the right success metrics clearly defined. Even if you think you have a one-dimensional pricing plan like I did (e.g. number of projects), you’d be better served testing it with paying users because pricing experiments take a much bigger toll than other types of experiments

via venturehacks.com

Great guest article by Ash Maurya, who went thru and telling about his experience with pricing experiments and how valuable can they be. Although I'm not very agree that free-to-paid approach is backwards most of the time, he's still very right that putting out your original intentions to charge is a great way to start working on your pricing scheme.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost