The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Acknowledgments

In my 25 years as a technology entrepreneur I was lucky to have three extraordinary mentors, each brilliant in his own field: Ben Wegbreit who taught me how to think, Gordon Bell who taught me what to think about, and Allen Michaels who showed me how to turn thinking into direct and immediate action.

I was also extremely fortunate to be working in Silicon Valley when three of its most influential marketing practitioners and strategists were active. As a VP of Marketing I was strongly influenced by the customer-centric books of Bill Davidow, former VP of Marketing of Intel and founder of Mohr, Davidow Ventures, and consider myself fortunate to have had him on my board at MIPS Computers. Regis McKenna was already a PR and marketing legend with his own firm when I started my career, but his thinking and practice still resonate in my work. Finally, I still remember the hair rising on the back of my neck when I first read Geoff Moore and the notion of a “chasm.” It was the first time I realized there were repeatable patterns of business behavior that could explain the heretofore unexplainable.

At U.C. Berkeley Haas Business School, Jerry Engel, director of the Lester Center on Entrepreneurship, was courageous enough to give me a forum to test and teach the Customer Development Methodology to hundreds of unsuspecting students. Professor John Freeman at Haas has offered valuable insight on the different sales cycles by Market Type. Finally my first teaching partner ...