{"id":4017,"date":"2010-09-09T06:13:48","date_gmt":"2010-09-09T13:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/?p=4017"},"modified":"2017-03-03T23:20:32","modified_gmt":"2017-03-04T04:20:32","slug":"intimately-know-your-customer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/intimately-know-your-customer\/4017\/","title":{"rendered":"Lean Startup: Intimate Customer Understanding"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"a296a24fa2fc69ef5487857f02f111e8\" data-index=\"9\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- Single Post readerboard -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:728px;height:90px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8207522353004717\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1144967431\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<!--powerpress_player--><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_flv\" style=\"margin-bottom: 1px !important;\">Podcast: <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/media\/lean-startup\/steve-blank-customer-discovery.flv\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/?powerpress_pinw=4017-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/media\/lean-startup\/steve-blank-customer-discovery.flv\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"steve-blank-customer-discovery.flv\">Download<\/a><\/p><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_subscribe_links\">Subscribe: <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/shmula.com-lean-leadership\/id930098243?mt=2&amp;ls=1#episodeGuid=https%3A%2F%2Fstaging.opexlearning.com%2Fresources%2F%3Fp%3D4017\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_itunes\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe on Apple Podcasts\" rel=\"nofollow\">Apple Podcasts<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/feed\/podcast\/\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_rss\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe via RSS\" rel=\"nofollow\">RSS<\/a><\/p><p>Steve Blank explains that successful entrepreneurs intimately know their customers &#8211; what pain do they experience, how they buy, why they buy, what problems do they face and why, and what solutions they might need.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\r\n<table border=\"1\" cellpadding=\"5\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>4 Steps to the Epiphany Video Series<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td>\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li><a title=\"customer and market risks video from steve blank\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/the-lean-startup-customer-and-market-risks\/3980\/\">Customer and Market Risks<\/a><\/li>\r\n\t<li><a title=\"customer discovery explained by steve blank\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/customer-discovery\/4008\/\">Customer Discover<\/a><\/li>\r\n\t<li><a title=\"customer development process from steve blank\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/the-customer-development-process\/3988\/\">Customer Development Process<\/a><\/li>\r\n\t<li><a title=\"build your company by steve blank\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/customer-development-company-building-standard-work\/4002\/\">Building a Company<\/a><\/li>\r\n\t<li><a title=\"organizational design in a startup\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/startup-organizational-design-the-customer-development-team\/4013\/\">Startup Organizational Design<\/a><\/li>\r\n\t<li><a title=\"role of publicity in a startup\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/publicity-and-the-lean-startup\/3998\/\">Publicity for your Startup<\/a><\/li>\r\n\t<li><a title=\"knowing your customer is important according to steve blank\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/intimately-know-your-customer\/4017\/\">Know Your Customer<\/a><\/li>\r\n\t<li><a title=\"rethinking product development in a startup\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/rethinking-product-development-a-customer-development-approach\/3973\/\">Rethinking Product Development<\/a><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n<\/div>\r\n&nbsp;\n<div class=\"university-transcript\">\n<h2>Steve Blank Intimate Customer Understanding Transcript<\/h2>\n<p>Steve Blank: If you look at my career, I was never in the same industry twice, maybe semiconductors. There is nothing about a business that isn&#8217;t rocket science to understand well enough within a certain period of time. I&#8217;m not asking you to become a heart surgeon, but it&#8217;s not that hard to understand the tools a heart surgeon might need, but you won&#8217;t do it from inside your building. That is the job of a great entrepreneur is to become a domain expert enough to understand the day and the life of their customer, their buyer and anybody else in their organizational chain. If you can&#8217;t do that, you are just tying one hand behind your own back. And if that sounds like too much of a burden, don&#8217;t do it. Be like every other entrepreneur that goes out of business. Understanding why your customers buy, what&#8217;s important to them isn&#8217;t past &#8220;Gee, I developed the neat idea in my dorm or company.&#8221; Does that answer your question?<\/p>\n<p>Male: Did you ever, from out of your personal experience, ever experience something that you&#8217;ve actually driven a customer purely by understanding his business model?<\/p>\n<p>Steve: Sure. It&#8217;s not that I&#8217;ve driven a customer. It&#8217;s the other way around. I&#8217;ve understood that I was talking in Greek and they were speaking in Spanish. That usually is because I was talking about features and they had a problem they needed me to solve and I wasn&#8217;t talking like about reservoir simulation. I was trying to sell supercomputers. I wasn&#8217;t talking about computational fluid dynamics and I was trying to sell them supercomputers. I wasn&#8217;t talking about Corp, PageMaker and Illustrator and I was trying to sell them desktop publishing graphics boards. Usually when you could connect on a level of what&#8217;s their need, you actually get a lot further about let me tell you about the bits or let me show you this great website. Does that answer your question?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0976470705?ie=UTF8&amp;ref_=sr_1_1&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1282662643&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=shr&amp;camp=213733&amp;creative=393173&amp;tag=sixsigma09-20\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3714 aligncenter\" title=\"four-steps-to-epiphany\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/four-steps-to-epiphany.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"248\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/four-steps-to-epiphany.jpg 490w, https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/four-steps-to-epiphany-300x151.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 490px) 100vw, 490px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSSSteve Blank explains that successful entrepreneurs intimately know their customers &#8211; what pain do they experience, how they buy, why they buy, what problems do they face and why, and what solutions they might need. Steve Blank Intimate Customer Understanding Transcript Steve Blank: If you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12327,"featured_media":9622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,697],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lean Startup Intimate Customer Understanding<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"intimately know your customer - that will increase your chances for creating a product that actually meets a market need\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lean Startup Intimate Customer Understanding\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"intimately know your customer - that will increase your chances for creating a product that actually meets a market need\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/intimately-know-your-customer\/4017\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"OpEx Learning\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/get.shmula\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-09-09T13:13:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-03-04T04:20:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/know-the-customer-understand-needs.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"641\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"481\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Uday Kawar\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@shmula\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@shmula\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Uday Kawar\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/intimately-know-your-customer\/4017\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/intimately-know-your-customer\/4017\/\",\"name\":\"Lean Startup Intimate Customer Understanding\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/intimately-know-your-customer\/4017\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/intimately-know-your-customer\/4017\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/know-the-customer-understand-needs.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2010-09-09T13:13:48+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-03-04T04:20:32+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/#\/schema\/person\/9335b5223b67189b35bda7d6be11c3fd\"},\"description\":\"intimately know your customer - 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