The Four Steps to the Epiphany Successful Strategies for Products that Win

good enough only for our first paying customers.

Earlyvangelists are a special breed of customers willing to take a risk on your startup’s product or service because they can actually envision its potential to solve a critical and immediate problem—
and they have the budget to purchase it.

successful startup solves this conundrum by focusing its development and early selling efforts on a very small group of early customers who have bought into the startup’s vision.

Develop the Product for the Few, Not the Many

turning the founders’
initial hypotheses about their market and customers into facts.

had a solution in search of a problem

They had developed a great product, but they had neglected to spend an equivalent amount of time developing the market

build a repeatable sales road map for the sales and marketing teams that will follow later. The sales road map is the playbook of the proven and repeatable sales process that has been field-tested by successfully selling the product to early customers.

For a startup to succeed, Product and Customer Development must remain synchronized and operate in concert.

In short, in big companies, the product spec is market-driven; in startups, the marketing is product-driven.