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Once you create a loyal customer base, it's tough for a competitor to take that away.

It is customers that decide if we succeed.

Clearly, every company needs a leader. That's an important part of being the CEO of the company.

Companies cannot really see beyond their current customer base. They explicitly or implicitly do things to protect their current customers. And the last person to want real change is your customer. This is why most new ideas come from small companies that have nothing to lose.

For Customer Development to succeed, everyone on the team - from investor or parent company to engineers, marketers and founders - needs to understand and agree that the Customer Development process is different to its core.

Not everybody is created equal, and it's important for companies to identify those high potentials and treat them differently, accelerate their development and pay them more. That process is so incredibly important to developing first-class leadership in a company.

Unlike people, companies outlive their founders and their leaders.

I would not describe myself as a super early adopter of consumer technology.

Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need.

Any dispassionate observer would recognize that on Day One, a start-up has no customers, and unless the founder is a true domain expert, he or she can only guess about the customer, problem, and business model.