From: Blank, S. & Dorf, B. (2012). The Startup Owners Manual.

Pescadero, CA: K&S Ranch, Inc. Pages 57-60.

Develop the Product for the Few, Not the Many
In existing companies, the goal of traditional product management and marketing is
to develop a market-requirements document (MRD) for engineering that contains
the sum of all possible customer feature requests, prioritized in a collaborative
effort among Product Management hosts focus groups, analyzes sales data from the
field, and looks at customer feature requests and complaints. This information leads
to the adding of requested features to the product specification, and the
engineering team builds them into the next product release.
While this process is rational for an established company entering an existing
market, its folly for startups. Why? Startups arent small versions of large, existing
companies where theres plenty of customer knowledge and input. In established
companies, the MRD process ensures that engineering will build a product that
appeals to existing customers in a known market, where customers and their needs
are known. On a startups first day, theres limitedif anycustomer input for
creating a formal product specification.
In a startup, the first product is not designed to satisfy a mainstream
customer. No startup can afford to build a product with every feature a mainstream
customer needs all at once. The product would take years to get market and be
obsolete by the time it arrived. Instead, successful startups solve this conundrum by
focusing development and early selling efforts on a very small group of early
customers who have bought into the startups vision. These visionary customers will
give the company the feedback necessary to add features to the product over time.

Earlyvangelists are willing to make a leap of faith and buy

an early product.

Earlyvangelists: The Most Important Customers of All

Enthusiasts who spread the good news about your product to friends, family or coworkers are often called evangelists. But a new word is needed to describe the early
adopters the visionary customers who buy unfinished and untested products,
because they want to first, whether its for the sake of gaining a competitive edge
or winning bragging rights. We call these early adopters earlyvangelists. Unlike
mainstream business or consumer-product customers who want to buy a finished,

completed, tested product from a startup. Every industry has a small subset of
visionaries willing to take a leap of faith on an early product.
One of the mistakes that startup founders make is to give away or heavily
discount early alpha/beta products to blue-chip customers. In single-sided markets
(where the user is the payer) earlyvangelists will be happy to pay for early access
to the product. If they wont, they arent earlyvangelists. Their willingness to pay is
a critical part of the customer discovery process. Youll use it to test the entire
buying process.

Earlyvangelists are willing or eager accelerators of your viral

growth.

In both physical and web/mobile channels, earlyvangelists display these

common characteristics

They have a problem or need.

They understand they have a problem.
Theyre actively searching for a solution and have a timetable
for finding it.
The problem is so painful that theyve cobbled together an
interim solution.
Theyve committed, or can quickly acquire, budget dollars to
purchase.

Think of earlyvangelists characteristics along a scale of customer pain.

Earlyvangelist customers will be found only at the top of the scale those
who have already been looking for a solution, built a home-grown solution
(whether in a company by building a software solution or at home by taping
together a fork, a light bulb and a vacuum cleaner) and have or can acquire a
budget. These people are perfect earlyvangelist candidates. They can be
relied on for feedback and initial sales; theyll tell others about the product
and spread the world that the vision is real. Moreover, they can be potential
advisory board candidates (more about advisory boards in Chapter 6).

Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) First

The idea that a startup builds its product for a small group of initial customers
rather than devising a generic mainstream spec is radical. What follows is equally
revolutionary.