FAQ

Agile Development is the engineering method used to develop products iteratively and incrementally with flexibility to react to customer feedback.It recognizes that customer needs and the final product spec cannot be fully defined a priori.Agile is the antithesis of Waterfall Development.

Something that needs to be true for your idea to work partially or fully but that hasn’t been validated yet.

Is the description of how an organization creates, delivers and captures value

Refers to Alexander Osterwalder`s 9 box Business Model Canvas

Channel is a sales and-or distribution channel.How the product gets from your company to the customer.

Cohort analysis is the measurement of specific unchanging group of customers over time.Company BuildingCompany Building is the fourth of four steps in the Customer Development process.Founders reorganize the company from one focused on searching for a business model into building an organization that execute.

Is a tactic to grow existing customers by encouraging them to buy complementary products, increasing their average order size.

First described in the Four Steps to the Epiphany, is the four/step process to organize the search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

Customer Development team replaces the traditional Sales, Marketing, and Business Development in the discovery and validation steps of startupsThis team is responsible for validating the business model hypotheses in front of customers.The team must have at least 1 founder with the authority to change the company´s strategy.

Is the first of the four steps of Customer Development.In Discovery, founders articulate their hypotheses about the business model and then run experiments to test problem and solution in front of customers.

Customer Relationships are the strategies used by companies to get customers into its sales channel, keep them as customers, and over time grow their value to the company through additional revenue and customer referrals from them.

Defines a single subset of a startup customer universe and how they differ from others.Companies define specific value propositions for each segment.

Customer Validation is the second of the four steps of Customer Development.In validation, founders take their tested hypotheses and try to get initial orders/users/customers.

Customer Creation is the third of four Customer Development steps.In creation, once founders validate their business model, they expand sales and marketing activities to grow.

Earned Media is the free exposure a company generates.

An emerging market is a country that has some characteristics of a developed market, but does not meet standards to be a developed market. This includes countries that may become developed markets in the future or were in the past. The economies of China and India are considered to be the largest.

Executing a Business Model is what companies do after they have found a repeatable an scalable business model.It is how companies grow revenue once they have refined and proven their plan to do so.It requires significant organizational changes.

Experiments are what startups conduct to test hypotheses.Experiments are designed as objective pass/fail tests.

Describes how products and services create gains and help customers achieve the outcomes and benefits they require, expect, desire, or dream of by getting a job done.

Is a key tenet of Customer Development.It observes that unlike an existing company, in a startup there are no facts inside the building, so founders need to get outside to talk to customers.It’s the customer who can turn the startups many guesses about its business model into facts.

Also know as a Hack day, Hackfest or Codefest. Hackathon is a design sprint-like event in which computer progremmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers, project anagers and others. Hackathons typically last between a day and a week. The word “Hackathon” is a portmanteau of te words hack and marathon.

High-fidelity MVP is the simplest minimum viable product and is often quite rudimentary or “ rough and dirty.”It is used to gather feedback about the validity of the customer Solution.

Hypotheses are the educated guesses a startup founder have about their Business Model HypothesesHypotheses are drawn on a Business Model Canvas, and tested and refined throughout the CustomerDevelopment process.

Interest In the physical channel, Interest is one of four steps in the “ get customers ” sales funnel.

Lean Startup is a combination of Customer Development and agile Development popularized by Eric Ries.

Strategic learning tool to capture insights from research and experiments.

Low-fidelity MVP is the simplest minimum viable product used to gather feedback about the validity of the customer problem.

LTV reflects the total revenue a customer is worth over the lifetime of his relationship with the company.LTV helps calculate how much a company can afford to spend to acquire a customer.

Refers to the four startup market entry strategies:1) Entering an existing market with a higher performance2) Resegmenting an existing market via a niche or low-cost strategy3) Creating a new market4) Creating a clone market-copying a business model from another country

MVP is the smallest group of features that will elicit customer feedbackInitially the MVP could be as simple as a Power Point slide, a video or demo.For web/mobile products it can be a low or high fidelity MVP that illustrates the core customer problem/need and demonstrates the product’s solution.

Multi-sides Business Models may have several different customer segments.Each segment may have a different value proposition, revenue model and channel.

Describes how products and services alleviate customer pains by eliminating or reducing bad outcomes, risks, and obstacles that prevent customers from getting a job done.

Physical Channel is a sales and fulfilment channel with physical points of distribution and customer contact.

Physical Products is a product made out of atoms.Cars, planes, and food are physical products, but social networks and search engines are not.

Pivot is a substantive change in one or more of the nine boxes of the Business Model Canvas.

Pricing describes the tactics a startup uses to determine how much it will charge in order to implement a profitable revenue model.

Product Development is the engineering group building the product.The process startup product development teams most often use to build the product is called Agile Development.

The practice of building quick, inexpensive, and rough study models to learn about the desirability, feasibility, and viability of alternative value propositions and business models

Revenue Model describes the strategy of how a company will make money.It answers the question: Where will the revenue be coming from?

Sales Closer is the individual on the Customer Development Team responsible for closing initial earlyvangelist sales.They deal with the sales logistics founders may not have experience with, negotiating with purchasing agents, contract terms, etc etc….They are not sales managers, and likely not going to become the company’s VP of Sales.

Sales Funnel is a visual metaphor for tracking sales progress sales progress shaped like a dumbbell.Consists of Get/Keep/Grow activities.Wide at the top with raw leads coming in the “ Get ” stage of the sales funnel narrows at each stage as the leads get qualified and turn into suspects, then prospects, then probable closes, until finally an order comes out of the narrow neck of the funnel.The “ Keep ” portion is narrow like a pipe, and the “ Grow ” part of the funnel widens to represent ever increasing revenue from an existing customer base.

Sales Roadmap provides details of how to execute each step of the sales funnel.

Search for a Business Model is what startups do before they have found a repeatable and scalable business model.

Sell-in is the first order a channel places for a new product.It can also be a seasonal order .

Compares one version of a web page with another and sees which produces the best results.

A startup is a temporary organization built to search for answers to what makes a repeatable and scalable business model.

Take Rate is the percentage of customers accepting, or taking, an up-sell/next-sell offer.

Strategic testing tool to design and structure your research and experiments.

Up-Sell is a tactic used to grow existing customers.It tries to get customers to buy more units or upgrade to a higher priced product to increase the average order size.

Value Proposition describes the job being done for the customer.It includes features that are solutions to customer problems or needs for the customer segment(s).A value proposition should match a startup customer segment.

Viral Loop is the process of satisfied customers referring others to a business, whether web, mobile or physical.It produces exponential increases in customer/users/traffic.

Viral Marketing are the marketing activities used to stimulate customers to refer others to the business.

Waterfall Development is the engineering process used to develop products linearly, sequentially, with a stage-by-stage method.The entire product and all features are specified up-front.Each waterfall stage is assigned to a separate team to ensure greater project and deadline control.Waterfall is the antithesis of Agile Development.