LHX program: The Customer Development Model
Just as businesses adjust and pivot, we are pivoting our blog to give you an inside look at the LaunchHouse Accelerator. There is no one roadmap for all startups, but LHX has adopted The Customer Development Model, created by Steve Blank, as a guideline for the program. This model teaches that, in Blank’s words, “Entrepreneurship is not about sitting in a classroom taking notes; it’s not about how smart you are. Collectively, customers are a lot smarter than they [the entrepreneurs] are”.
Blank realized that while many people go to college to learn how to execute business models, there is a lack of methodology for how to manage the process outside of the building. Blank wanted to create his own management model for startups.
This brings us back to The Customer Development Model and how it is being applied to LHX. Our startup companies have been tasked to get out of the building and validate customer pain points. Their two early-stage goals are:
- Test customer pain
- Discover how well their solutions solve the customer pain
In the words of Ash Maurya: “Life’s too short to build stuff nobody wants.”
Tune in next week for an exploration of what the first few week of the Accelerator looked like!