How to launch your startup to customers

The single biggest reason for startup failure is not making sales. Experts call it 'no customer/market need'. If you think this makes sense, ask yourself one question: Is your goal to build a product or make sales?

I've been launching startups for 35+ years and have helped 100's of others and most of us ,including me, fall into the trap of problem-solution, build a product, look for customers - Anybody spot what's wrong here?

If you can resist the urge to build a product (your great idea) and instead do the most important job an entrepreneur can do - find customers to validate your idea, then your chances of success skyrocket. There is scientific approach to this involving Lean Canvases, Customer Personas, Value Proposition Canvases and Validation Experiments. I'm only going to focus on the Experiments here.

Ground rules first:

Don't do survey's at this stage, people tell you want you want to hear or can't be bothered to think about their answers - in other words, they lie.

B2B is harder than B2C and customer interviews are the bedrock of B2B.

Customer behaviour trumps everything else.

So how do you collect validation data on customer behaviour? In B2C this can range from weak validation - landing pages that create a waitlist, through to strong validation - preorders. There's a lot in between but this should give you enough food for thought.

In summary, if you want to make sales then be an entrepreneur and find out what customers want. For everyone else, enjoy your hobby!