Lesson: Customer Discovery Primer with Steve Blank

Step #10 Hypothesis: Customer development is a four-step process

We put all these together, and we have a great series of hypotheses. What's interesting is the word hypotheses. I call that a $50 word. That really sounds pretty important, and I use it when I teach this class in universities. But you know what? The word hypotheses is really a fancy word for guesses, and if you really think about it when you fill out the business model canvas all you have is a series of guesses. That's it. That's all we have is a series of guesses. What's great about the business model canvas is it allowed us to organize our thinking not around functional organizations like what is sales doing or what's marketing doing or what does our spreadsheet say, but just around a series of thoughtful first guesses about who do we think our customers are and what products are we making for them, and how much are we going to charge, and that's great, and you could sit around all day or all week in your conference room figuring out what those are. But the odds are you're probably wrong, but it's a great first starting point, but the question is how do we change those guesses into facts?