Lean Coffee: Customer Segments

Today's Lean Coffee was hosted by Mark at BNOTIONS.

Some great points on customer segments:

• Reference: Geoffrey Moore - Crossing the chasm
• Get your early adopters to become evangelists, help you cross the gap
• They give feedback and a slightly different perspective
• Invest in retention more than acquisition --> referrals
• Early majority requires training/support/documentation than early adopter
• Early adopter term applies across many fields -- projects, organizations, etc.
• Influencer -- Applies to music, cars, etc.
• Identify people that have an active need, ask them questions
• When they have a clearly identified problem, and the pain is high enough, they're much more open to new stuff
• Segment your customers by talking to them and identifying similarities
• How do you identify evangelists?
• If they're supporting other users or otherwise being vocal (in a positive way)
• Stats: Who is the most effective at bringing in users? Often the same people that use it the most
• When you identify evangelists, give them stuff, help them help you
• The biggest skeptics can become the biggest evangelists
• Personal touch helps engagement -- send a note, give a phone call

That's it for today! What were your takeaways from the session?

Lean Coffee: Fast and Focused

Adil at My City Lives hosted today's Lean Coffee about being "fast and focused".

Ironically, the topic drifted a bit, but there was a lot of great insight to be had, including:

• Common Problem: Doing all parts in parallel - not a nice linear flow
• There's a tendency to not do true customer development -- instead only validating the parts you've already built
• Lean makes a startups a science -- takes away some of the romance
• Question: Is Lean a "true science"? Premise: Fail faster
• If you find out an idea is not valid, the learning from the failure is a success
• Big Bang example: For Retrievr -- Spent $5-6K instead of $50-100K
• Repositioning: Can be creative -- example: instagr.am
• Figuring out behaviour is the hardest part
• Example: People don't actually spend time with their photos after they take them
• Medical software: 6-9 months to fail -- 1 customer validated
• Everyone wants to be the next Steve Jobs
• Be careful of being "married to your idea" -- not willing to change
• Do you want one "at bat" -- where you need a home run -- or a full career?
• What is the shortest amount of time you need to get actionable data?
• Lean really helps with you have a "hunch" -- within a few interviews, have a good idea
• Do you focus on one industry? Good to have a "beachhead"
• Too broad of an idea dilutes the MVP
• Focus is key -- don't be afraid to focus on one segment
• Much more compelling message if you reduce the scope
• Messaging and positioning needs to be unique
• Analogy: getting on a busy subway -- make yourself small and squeeze in

Great commentary from everyone today. Looking forward to the next!