The Four Steps To The Epiphany {ReadingNotes}

The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blanks - ISBN 0976470705 - CafePress 2006

Motivation

Describe in a sentences or two what motivated me to read this book.

Pre-reading model

Seems like the ontogenesis/corticogenesis problem : imaginating that the current system "has always been in this state" and (wrongly) applying it to corporations.

Consider MBE "mise en situ" as an exercise

Reading

• 1 The path to disaster: The product development model
  • you do not know what the product is and your consider your founding hypothesis as an axiom that requires no proof
  • sweat does not equal value and customers trump technology
• 2 The path to epiphany: the customer development model
  • the feedback loop should include the "real world"
• 3 Customer discovery
  • leverage whoever you can knowing that early adopters are a specific kind of adopters
    • "earlyangelists" are smarter than you
• 4 Customer validation
  • test cheap
  • test cheaper
  • test even cheaper!
• 5 Customer creation
• 6 Company building

See also

• Retooling Early Stage Development by Steve Blank, Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner 2008
• Customer Development category by Steve Blank since 2009
• What is customer development? by Eric Ries Lessons Learned 2008
  • "find the minimum feature set required to get early customers"
    • Wikipedia:Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
• The Four Steps to the Epiphany handout
• Take a course from the king of customer development by Nivi, Venture Hacks 2009
  • http://venturehacks.com/topics/customer-development
• Wikipedia:Steven Gary Blank#Customer_Development
• Customer Development: Past, Present, Future by Steve Blank, Lean Startup Circle 2009
  • Past (start to min39)
  • Present (min39 to min68)
  • Future (min68 to the end)
    • collaboration, e.g. Internet Business Models of the TechStars by David Cohen, SpringStage 2009
• The Lean Launchpad with Steve Blank
  • Stanford online class starting in January 2012

Overall remarks and questions

• requires
  • a strong social network
    • to discuss with earlyvangelists
  • a strong reputation
    • to actually be able to sell a product that does not exist yet (not even an MVP)
• Seedea:SeedeaProtected/Leads seems like a sale roadmap but not a list of earlyvangelists!

Synthesis

So in the end, it was about X and was based on Y.

Critics

Point A, B and C are debatable because of e, f and j.

Vocabulary

(:new_vocabulary_start:) new_word (:new_vocabulary_end:)

Post-reading model

Draw a schema (using PmGraphViz or another solution) of the situation of the area in the studied domain after having read the book. Link it to the pre-reading model and align the two to help easy comparison.

Categories

• UncategorizedBook

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