What is Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

“A product with the fewest number of features needed to achieve a specific objective, and users are willing to “pay” in some form of a scarce resource.”

This is part of an ongoing series of concept definitions from “The Entrepreneur’s Guide 
to Customer Development” by Brant Cooper & Patrick Vlaskovits. This book is an awesome extension of the work Steve Blank started in “Four Steps to the Epiphany.” You can get a copy of the book today at http://custdev.com. I highly recommend it.

What are “Non-Traditional” Business Models?

“Business models that do not sell a product to a customer directly for a set amount of money. For example, business models that include some element of “free” or the desire to demonstrate scale prior to revenue.”

This is part of an ongoing series of concept definitions from “The Entrepreneur’s Guide 
to Customer Development” by Brant Cooper & Patrick Vlaskovits. This book is an awesome extension of the work Steve Blank started in “Four Steps to the Epiphany.” You can get a copy of the book today at http://custdev.com. I highly recommend it.

What does Pivot mean?

“In the Customer Development context, pivot means to change an element(s) of your customer-problem-solution hypotheses or business model, based on learning.”

This is part of an ongoing series of concept definitions from “The Entrepreneur’s Guide 
to Customer Development” by Brant Cooper & Patrick Vlaskovits. This book is an awesome extension of the work Steve Blank started in “Four Steps to the Epiphany.” You can get a copy of the book today at http://custdev.com. I highly recommend it.

What does Positioning mean?

“Positioning is the act of placing your product within a market landscape, in your audience’s mind.”

This is part of an ongoing series of concept definitions from “The Entrepreneur’s Guide 
to Customer Development” by Brant Cooper & Patrick Vlaskovits. This book is an awesome extension of the work Steve Blank started in “Four Steps to the Epiphany.” You can get a copy of the book today at http://custdev.com. I highly recommend it.

What does Segmentation mean?

“The practice of breaking down a larger market into smaller identifiable group of users who share specific needs and who reference each other.”

This is part of an ongoing series of concept definitions from “The Entrepreneur’s Guide 
to Customer Development” by Brant Cooper & Patrick Vlaskovits. This book is an awesome extension of the work Steve Blank started in “Four Steps to the Epiphany.” You can get a copy of the book today at http://custdev.com. I highly recommend it.

Book Review: “The Entrepreneur’s Guide 
to Customer Development” by Brant Cooper & Patrick Vlaskovits

I just finished reading this excellent extension of the work Steve Blank began in “Four Steps to the Epiphany” and I’m very impressed. Cooper and Vlakovits have taken a sometimes dense and weighty topic and made it accessible and actionable.

While not a replacement for 4 Steps I do find this work to be an essential addition to anyone creating a lean startup or considering and agile conversion at a company of any size.

As Ryan Martens, CTO and Founder of Rally Software says “agile can help you build the wrong product quickly.” The customer development methodologies help address this problem and help you identify the right product to build — often by having you build several products that turn out to be wrong.

You can get a copy of the book today at http://custdev.com. I highly recommend it.

What is a Lean Startup?

Sounding like you know what you’re talking about can be the first step to knowing what you’re talking about. In this series I help you understand terminology from the Agile/Lean/Web X.0 worlds.

Today’s Lesson: Lean Startup — A term coined by Eric Ries, lean startups are gaining ground in silicon valley.

More info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_Startup and startuplessonslearned.com/

What is SaaS?

Sounding like you know what you’re talking about can be the first step to knowing what you’re talking about. In this series I help you understand terminology from the Agile/Lean/Web X.0 worlds.

Today’s Lesson: Software as a Service or SaaS for short. More info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service and saas.com/

What is Lean?

Definitions for cocktail party credibility. Helping you sound like you know what you’re talking about.

Lean is a manufacturing philosophy that seeks to eliminate waste which is defined as any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer. It also seeks to increase quality by eliminating defects — which are also seen as waste.

More information: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing

What is Scrum?

Definitions for cocktail party credibility. Helping you sound like you know what you’re talking about.

More info: scrumalliance.org/