4 resources from Steve Blank we point founders to, and the questions each answers.
✍️ Essay
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Blank invented customer development, and this manifesto boils it into a short set of rules, starting with the idea that there are no facts inside your building so get outside. It is the origin of the discipline that says a startup is a search for a business model you must test, not execute. Read it for the founding principles in one page.
A two-minute animation showing why building before talking to customers wastes months. Useful to send a cofounder who wants to skip discovery and start coding. Fast, memorable, and free.
Blank's core rule is that there are no facts inside your building, so a disagreement resolved at your desk is not really resolved. His customer discovery method gives you the scientific loop of stating a hypothesis, testing it with real customers, and validating, invalidating, or modifying it. That loop is the machine that turns a stubborn cofounder argument into evidence.
Blank argues that market definition, not just customer interviews, is the step founders skip, and that getting it wrong is what makes you chase the wrong buyer for months. A denser read from the founder of customer development, useful once you suspect the problem is bigger than any one interview.
