Title: What is Customer Development? – Market By Numbers
Headings: What is Customer Development?
What is Customer Development?
Where to Start?
Companies that are pre- Product-Market fit should start with Customer Discovery.
You are pre Product-Market Fit if you:
There are three phases to Customer Discovery:
There are three phases to Customer Validation:
Non Customer Development Death Spiral

Content: You are at Product-Market fit, if you have built a product that customers need and this has been validated by high user adoption or through a significant number of paid users, and to some degree adoption and retention are "running themselves." P-M fit is an esoteric concept you only know you've achieved after you've achieved it. It's like declaring the "turning-point" in a game: only once you've won or lost, can you reasonably hypothesize the actual turning point. Customer Validation is about validating your proposed MVP and sales and marketing roadmap. You're not ready to scale -- hire outside sales, conduct a PR blitz, etc. -- until after Customer Validation. There are three phases to Customer Validation: Validated MVP: You understand the core value you are providing your customers and they are passionate about your product.