The Four Steps To The Epiphany is a book on entrepreneurship and customer development by Steve Blank. He explains that there are four steps or phases involved in the process of creating a successful startup:
- Step 1: Customer Discovery: Is there a market for your product? This phase includes defining the problem, understanding potential customers’ needs, and doing the necessary market research to see if they are willing to buy your solution.
- Step 2: Customer Validation: Test whether these customers are really willing to pay for the solution you offer them. How do you find out this information? By talking directly with potential customers once again, continuing their education until they understand what you sell, convincing them it’s something they need, and getting them to pay for it. The goal of this phase is to learn whether the product will sell itself or if your startup has a chance at succeeding.
- Step 3: Customer Creation: If your customers are willing to pay for it, you can build a business around it and start producing and selling it. However, in order to begin doing so successfully, you must come up with a value-priced product that makes sense in terms of cost and customer benefit. That means combining business processes with technology to create something new…something much better than what’s already available on the market today! The goal of this phase is to find out how much your product sells for and how much money can be made from each unit sold.
- Step 4: Company Building: Now that you’ve had success selling your product, it’s time to grow your company. You will need to figure out how many salespeople are necessary for this, hire them and set up an organizational structure that enables everyone to work together.
