JonBischke.com

A few months ago I was tipped off to world of Steve Blank and customer development. Simply put, if you’re an entrepreneur understanding these concepts will likely mean the difference between success and failure. Steve personally has taken five companies through this process to IPO. Not a bad track record.

While there’s a ton of great stuff about customer development on the Web I wanted to gather up all of the resources and put them together in one place. I’ll update this post over time as I come across stuff (please add any additional resources you find in the comments so I can add them to the post) so bookmark it and check back from time to time (or just subscribe to the RSS feed).

So here’s what I feel is the most complete list of customer development resources on the web:

The Four Steps to the Epiphany – The book that started it all available on Amazon or Cafe Press.

Steve Blank’s blog

http://steveblank.com/

Steve Blank’s videos and podcasts on Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?author=282

Steve Blank’s presentations

http://www.slideshare.net/venturehacks/customer-development-methodology-presentation
http://www.slideshare.net/venturehacks/customer-development-syllabus
http://www.slideshare.net/venturehacks/customer-development-1-introduction
http://www.slideshare.net/venturehacks/customer-development-three-types-of-markets-1045186
http://www.slideshare.net/startuplessonslearned/lean-startup-presentation-to-maples-investments-by-steve-blank-and-eric-ries-presentation

Steve Blank Berkeley course on Venture Hacks

Customer Development, Class 1

Customer Development, Classes 3 and 4

Eric Ries’s presentations

http://www.slideshare.net/guest472f47/2008-09-06-eric-ries-haas-columbia-customer-development-engineering-presentation

Eric Ries Lean Startup Presentation For Web 2.0 (with audio!)

Eric Ries blog posts containing “customer development”

http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/search?q=%22customer+development%22 (esp this one: http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-is-customer-development.html)

Eric Ries talk at Berkeley (along with slides)

http://venturehacks.com/articles/lean-startup

Ron Conway and Mike Maples (VC Perspective on investing in Cust-Dev companies)

http://awe.sm/YO (Courtesy: Reemer)

Sean Ellis’s Startup Marketing presentation

http://www.slideshare.net/seanellis/marketing-plan-for-web-20-startups-presentation

Sean Ellis’s Blog

http://startup-marketing.com/

Dave McClure’s presentations (all are somewhat similar):

http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pirates-fowamiami-feb-2009
http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/silicon-valley-20-the-startup-metrics-revolution-tokyo-december-2008-presentation
http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/numbers-not-napkins-simple-startup-metrics-presentation

Sean Murphy posts on customer development

http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/category/customer-development/

Technical Stuff

10 Pitfalls of Dirty Code (from IMVU Engineer) – http://aegisknight.livejournal.com/138346.html (Courtesy: Reemer)
Tim Fitzgerald’s Blog – http://timothyfitz.wordpress.com/ (Courtesy: Reemer)

I can’t overemphasize how important this stuff. If you’re an entrepreneur you should immersing yourself in it on a regular basis.

(PS Also follow Twitter feeds of @sgblank, @ericries, @venturehacks and me to see the latest customer development stuff that makes it way to the Web.)