The Startup Owner's Manual. Steve Blank

How to Read This Book

      CLEARLY, THE STARTUP OWNER’S MANUAL IS not a novel. This book is a step-by-step how-to guide that details a process for building a successful, profitable, scalable startup. It has more in common with a car repair manual than it does with your favorite page-turner. Don’t attempt to read this book in a single sitting or long weekend. It will be your companion—and, we hope, your very best friend—for the six to 30 months or more that it often takes to begin building a successful, scalable startup business.

      Organization

      This book is organized in four distinct sections. The first, Getting Started, describes the Customer Development methodology and ends with the “Customer Development Manifesto,” a series of 14 guiding principles for startups deploying the Customer Development process.

      Don’t read too much at a time.

      The next section, Step One, “Customer Discovery," turns the founders’ vision into a business model canvas and then into a series of hypotheses. Those hypotheses are turned into experiments, and tested with customers to see if your understanding of the customer problem and proposed solution mesh.

Step Two, “Customer Validation," expands the scope of the business model testing to see if you can get enough orders or users to prove that you have a repeatable and scalable business model.

      The fourth key section, found in Appendix A, is a series of Checklists that help you track your progress at every stage of the Customer Development process. Use the checklists at the end of each step (yes, there’s one for each) to make sure you have completed all the key tasks outlined in that step. Photocopy them, scan them, and circulate them to team members. But most important, use them to be sure you have completed each step—before you move on to the next.

      Web/Mobile vs. Physical Channels

      This book recognizes that Customer Development operates at different speeds for web/mobile startups versus products sold through physical distribution channels. The process to “Get/Keep/Grow” customers—the core job of any business—is different, and web products are built and obtain feedback faster. Recognizing this, we offer parallel tracks through the book: one focused on physical goods and channels, and one focused on web/mobile products and channels. Often, the book addresses them separately. When it does, we begin with the physical channel, then follow with web/mobile.

      In each phase of customer discovery and validation, you’ll see diagrams like this to help you understand where you are in the process:

      The upper row indicates the recommended steps for physical channel startups. The lower row depicts steps for web/mobile startups. When the steps are nearly identical, the boxes merge.

When we’re discussing web and mobile channels, products, strategies or tactics, you’ll see the

at the start of those discussions, always in this typeface, alongside the text that shows you’ve “changed channels.”

      It’s worth reading both versions of a step before turning to the one explaining “your” business type. When information in one channel is essential for startups in the other, we’ll tell you so—and tell

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