If someone presented a plan like this one at a Lean Startup Meetup, they’d probably be booed off the stage. And yet, when I coach teams, “Talk to customers” is a piece of advice I almost never give. Founders are stubborn. Most either think they’ve already spent enough time speaking with customers or they’ve already decided it’s not worthwhile. Instead, I saw my job as helping the team run a good experiment that, from their point of view, would confirm their preexisting beliefs. They were already convinced that they’d sell a lot of units at the trade show, so I couldn’t get them to start with
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