Shovel Your Way Into the Valley of Death

You can’t shovel yourself out of the Valley of Death, but Customer Discovery can fill in the hollow before you take the plunge.

This Spring, Molly Ashford discussed the ominous Valley of Death[1] faced by start-ups, and highlighted a few tools UNeTECH utilizes to guide entrepreneurs out of the valley. In short, the Valley represents the income trough from product development until captured revenues can buoy income back to break-even. This Valley is somewhat inevitable: before sales can be realized, significant expenses must be credited toward fixed overhead and variable costs—staffing, manufacturing, insurance, distribution, regulatory, legal, etc.

Customer Discovery empowers entrepreneurs to overcome the Valley.

Although inevitable, this sinking feeling scares away many would be entrepreneurs—and thus the solutions that can benefit society. For some products, especially software, this leap of faith is more akin to stepping off a curb. For manufactured FDA-restricted products, it can look more like that first big drop on a roller coaster.

But fear not: you are far from being at the mercy of the valley. How? Customer discovery equips you with several opportunities to mitigate descent into the Valley and propel your trajectory up to sustained growth.

Shorten the Valley. Reducing or eliminating product iteration post-launch is crucial to early success. Ensure you have achieved MVP by dialoguing directly with customers to confirm your product solves their significant pain points. Recalling a product, fulfilling warranties, and investing resources to train customers on products that will be materially modified in short course will nosedive your growth curve.

Traction. Speaking directly with customers ensures marketing efforts are directed at the most acute customer pain points. The market is a noisy place. Cut through the static by highlighting those features of your products that customers value most. This is possible only when you truly understand the market you want to serve. Customer Discovery validates and ranks pain points to help your craft your marketing pitch effectively.

Shortcuts. You’re familiar with the axiom: there is nothing new under the sun. Even the most novel solutions have been iterated on some level. Engaging your market in conversation frequently results in not just sales leads—we’ll drop those in the back pocket for later, thank you—but discovery of “lead users” so frustrated with the problem that they created a homemade solution. Ignore for a moment how crude or situation-specific it may be. Much can be gleaned from its use. What worked? What didn’t? How is it different from your solution? How is it the same? Did they come at the problem in a way that you can synthesize within your own solution? Learning at others’ expense is a cheap lesson indeed.

For start-ups, communicating directly with customers is the surest path to spending the least time in the Valley. It’s hard to hear that a customer’s needs don’t align exactly with your vision, or that features need to be reconfigured to interface with their practice. But listening early—diligently seeking constructive feedback—can mean making those changes when your start-up is in its leanest phase. Effective use of CD abbreviates and flattens the Valley of Death. Listening pays off.

[1] Ashford, Molly. What is…The Valley of Death? https://www.unetech.org/2021/12/09/what-is-the-valley-of-death/