

Ask HN: is customer development necessary for an existing B2B market? - toumhi

I'm in the very early stage of a creation of a startup focused on online file sharing for companies: the idea is to do something like sharefile.com or smartfile.com but in France. So I know that there's a market with established competitors (also a few ones in France). I still can't decide whether doing early customer discovery, testing hypotheses etc is a good idea or whether I should spend time on building a product instead. I'm not sure whether customer development methodology applies for an existing market with existing competitors.
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mindcrime
Is it _necessary_? That's arguable. Is it a _good idea_? I would argue "yes."

Think about it... just because there are existing competitors doesn't mean
there's nothing for you to learn. In fact, learning _about_ those competitors
is part of the Customer Development process. How are you going to
differentiate your offering? Here's a hint... having a better handle on the
problems your customers need solved, gives you a leg up on providing a better
solution.

Anyway, if you go through the CD process, as laid out in _The Four Steps to
the Epiphany_ , you'll find that a big part of it is about learning the state
of the existing market, making decisions about market type, positioning, etc.

The other point to realize, as @sgblank himself points out, is that if you
already have a lot of knowledge of the area you're working in, and if your
existing ideas are mostly right, the CD process will just go very fast...
you'll basically just being quickly confirming what you already know. Just
beware of confirmation bias and make sure you're not tricking yourself into
seeing what you want to see.

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toumhi
Thanks, it helps! I was thinking that it was better to focus on a couple of
main features as highlighted by competitors. It's not that I have a lot of
knowledge about the area, but I thought that I could see what the competitors
in bigger markets have done and use it to my advantage.

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glasner
That would be resounding yes. I have over ten years of experience in my
market, but I still learn something every time I talk to a potential customer.
Talking with customers will challenge most of your assumptions, and we can all
use a little time outside our bubbles.

~~~
toumhi
OK, I was doubtful of spending time learning things that competitors expose in
their "features & benefits" page, but now I'm convinced I should spend some
time out of the building :-)

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bobdorf
As Steve Blank says, "most products fail for lack of customers, not
technology." Why would you spend time building a product--almost any product--
unless you are absolutely sure there's a market for it? What makes your file
sharing service different from the others? Where will its market share(and
revenue) come from? Why will people choose your product instead of entrenched
competition? And why would you spend weeks or months building something unless
you're absolutely certain there's a market for it?

~~~
toumhi
I'm almost sure there is a market for it because there are a couple of
competitors in the english-speaking market. I intend to make better marketing
than existing competitors, that's how I see the differenciation as of now. But
I'm not sure exactly which feature is the most important to build at the
beginning, so in that sense it might be useful to talk to customers
beforehand.

