The Lost Startup Step: Customer Validation
Many startups that have just secured funding have very aggressive goals to generate revenue. But, in the rush to profit, critical steps are sometimes overlooked. The ‘fail forward fast’ mantra is alive and well and with good reason. In running my startup, I can attest that driving your team through a lean launch approach makes a lot of sense. In theory, at least.
When you’re focused on perfecting your solution, driving speed to market delivery, and protecting your margins - your dance card fills up fast. For our startup clients, we’ve noticed a hyper-focus on product and margins can leave a blind spot in the customer validation process.
Customer validation, customer analysis, and customer research does one thing - it confirms you are solving a problem your customer truly has.
Here is how we’ve seen this come up with our clients:
Some founders were focused on creating the best possible product to the exclusion of everything else. They tied sales stagnation and lack of engagement directly to product feature faults and began iterating improvements based on internal assumptions about the product without getting actual customer feedback.
Other founders held detailed focus groups before the launch driving their customer segmentation and messaging strategy. Once in-market, they found it difficult to gain the expected traction and customer growth. A strong belief in pre-market data created blinders, preventing them from thinking additional market validation or repositioning might be the solution.
Another founding team was so passionately committed to the cause behind their business and deeply invested in the providers they hired to deliver the services they assumed customers would get it too. They spent time looking at the competition but never looked at how to distinguish themself from the competition or what the customer's problems might be. They never engaged an ideal customer to determine if their services were in fact a solution to a real need.
Look, it’s so much easier to sit outside of a company and identify steps that might need to be retraced or explored deeper before moving forward. In the ceaseless activity of getting a business off the ground, taking focus away from perceived revenue drivers feels negligent. Sometimes a stranger in the room is all you need to see a new, or fresh, perspective.
As a startup business owner, it’s easy to say you’re customer-centric, but so much harder to actually hold yourself accountable by getting verifiable data to help drive the iterations and changes needed. Because you have a shorter runway than a larger organization, each key decision can become an inflection point that shrinks or extends your trajectory.
Regardless of the product or service, size of team, or season of business, hearing directly from your customers will only ever help you make better, smarter, less costly, and less time-intensive decisions. Sometimes the answer is really just that simple. Ask your customer.
