(2011-08-01) Customer Development Interviewing Challenge

I'm getting frustrated at what feels like a disconnect between the general/abstract recommendations in the Customer Development area, vs the "challenges" (Failure-s) I've experienced in a number of (both B2B and B2C) Start Up-s. See for instance Living Independently (which was both). The process I've experienced looks like:

• have a market/problem and solution in mind
• interview people from the target market to verify that the problem you have in mind is a big/compelling pain-point for them, within that general problem area (it's pretty hard to identify an overall biggest-problem for people that's actionable).
• refine your product spec to be a better solution to that problem
• interview people later (some of the same people, some others) to validate that your planned solution - get some positive response (some people say this step is almost pointless, as you almost always get validation - see links on Hiten Shah page)
• build v1 of product (whether you can call that an MVP is always up to debate).
• outcome: surprising low adoption or activation. "Oh yeah, that sounds awesome. But I'm really busy this month."

What now?

• let the whack-a-mole feature-march begin!
• generate a different MVP solving the same problem in a different way?
• Pivot to a totally different problem?
• raise more money fast before someone finds out?