Quotes About Customer

must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.

Because startups often accidentally build something nobody wants, it doesn't matter much if they do it on time and on budget. The

the paid engine of growth is powered by a feedback loop. Each customer pays a certain amount of money for the product over his or her "lifetime" as a customer. Once variable costs are deducted, this usually is called the customer lifetime value (LTV). This revenue can be invested in growth by buying advertising.

I have always been a bit of a troublemaker at the companies at which I have worked, pushing for rapid iteration, data-driven decision making, and early customer involvement.

A head start is rarely large enough to matter, and time spent in stealth mode—away from customers—is unlikely to provide a head start. The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.

The rules that govern the sticky engine of growth are pretty simple: if the rate of new customer acquisition exceeds the churn rate, the product will grow.

What if it turns out that the customer doesn't want the product we're building? Although this is never good news for an entrepreneur, finding out sooner is much better than finding out later. Working

Build-Measure-Learn. The fundamental activity of a startup is to turn ideas into products, measure how customers respond, and then learn whether to pivot or persevere.

good design is one that changes customer behavior for the better.

The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build—the thing customers want and will pay for—as quickly as possible. In other words, the Lean Startup is a new way of looking at the development of innovative new products that emphasizes fast iteration and customer insight, a huge vision, and great ambition, all at the same time.

speed and quality are allies in the pursuit of the customer's long-term benefit.

Greg set out to change the QuickBooks development process by using four principles: 1. Smaller teams. Shift from large teams with uniform functional roles to smaller, fully engaged teams whose members take on different roles. 2. Achieve shorter cycle times. 3. Faster customer feedback, testing both whether it crashes customers' computers and the performance of new features/customer experience. 4. Enable and empower teams to make fast and courageous decisions.

What products do customers really want? How will our business grow? Who is our customer? Which customers should we listen to and which should we ignore? These are the questions that need answering as quickly as possible to maximize a startup's chances of success. That is what creates value for a startup.

thing to build—the thing customers want and will pay for—as quickly as possible.

These discussions of quality presuppose that the company already knows what attributes of the product the customer will perceive as worthwhile. In a startup, this is a risky assumption to make. Often we are not even sure who the customer is. Thus, for startups, I believe in the following quality principle: If we do not know who the customer is, we do not know what quality is.

Startups also have a true north, a destination in mind: creating a thriving and world-changing business. I call that a startup's vision. To achieve that vision, startups employ a strategy, which includes a business model, a product road map, a point of view about partners and competitors, and ideas about who the customer will be. The product is the end result of this strategy (see the chart on this page).

The Five Whys ties the rate of progress to learning, not just execution. Startup teams should go through the Five Whys whenever they encounter any kind of failure, including technical faults, failures to achieve business results, or unexpected changes in customer behavior.

The Four Steps to the Epiphany

The CEO and VP of product, instead of building their business, are engaged in the drudgery of solving just one customer's problem.

In a Wizard of Oz test, customers believe they are interacting with the actual product, but behind the scenes human beings are doing the work.

a good design is one that changes customer behavior for the better.

In traditional mass production, the way to avoid stockouts—not having the product the customer wants—is to keep a large inventory of spares just in case.

What if we found ourselves building something that nobody wanted? In that case what did it matter if we did it on time and on budget? When I went home at the end of a day's work, the only things I knew for sure were that I had kept people busy and spent money that day.

its focus needs to be on improving customer retention. This goes against the standard intuition in that if a company lacks growth, it should invest more in sales and marketing.