The Four Steps to the Epiphany

APPENDIX A:THE CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT TEAM

Background: The Death Of The Departments

As we've seen early in this book, the first two steps in a startup, Customer Discovery and Customer Validation, require a task-oriented organization, not a functional one. And the task is unambiguous – learn and discover what problems customers have, and whether your product concept solves that problem; understand who will buy it; and use that knowledge to build a sales roadmap so a sales team can sell to them. And this organization (which we've been calling the Customer Development team) must have the agility to move with sudden and rapid shifts based on what customers have to say and the clout to reconfigure the company when the customer feedback requires it.

The need for a Customer Development team meant configuring the organizations that interacted with customers in a new and radical arrangement. I suggested (even insisted) that during Discovery and Validation there are no Sales, Marketing or Business Development organizations. And, even more painful for all the egos involved, there should be no executives with those titles. Finally, this Customer Development team must be led by one of the company's founders, or if not a founder someone with an equal vote and ability to radically change the company's direction, product or mission. This is not a job for a “hire” or someone's direct report. Optimally this group is headed by the founding CEO. Why do I feel so strongly about this?

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