We've been thinking a lot about how Steve Blank's “Customer Development” framework (from his legendary book “The Four Steps to the Epiphany”) is being significantly upgraded in the age of AI.

For those who need a quick refresher, Blank's framework is the foundation that shaped modern startup methodology and lean thinking:

1. Customer Discovery: Testing hypotheses about the problem, product, and customer

2. Customer Validation: Finding repeatable sales processes before scaling

3. Customer Creation: Creating end-user demand

4. Company Building: Transitioning from learning to execution

The Customer Discovery Revolution 🤔

Let's zoom in on that first step. Customer Discovery has traditionally been the most labor-intensive and time-consuming part of building a product people actually want. This is where Genway is creating the biggest impact.

Here's what's changing:

When Blank wrote his book, "getting out of the building" meant a lot of coffee meetings, phone calls, and painstaking note-taking. Today, Genway can handle much of the heavy lifting:

• Hypothesis generation and testing at scale: Genway can help you generate dozens of problem statements and test them simultaneously across channels.

• Pattern recognition in customer language: Genway excels at analyzing how people describe their problems, often surfacing patterns that human researchers might miss.

• Rapid prototyping feedback: Testing value propositions and messaging before you've written a single line of code.

But the secret sauce is still in the human + AI partnership.
The most effective teams are creating a clear division of labor:

• Genway handles: Volume, pattern recognition, and analysis.

• Humans focus on: Emotional intelligence, reading between the lines, spotting the difference between "that's interesting" and "take my money now!"

AI’s impact on customer development 🤩

The customer discovery phase could take months in the pre-AI era. With Genway,  you can cut that time to 1-2 weeks. But to be clear, cutting the time doesn’t involve reducing the rigor. With Genway, you’re able to test significantly more hypotheses and enter customer validation with considerably more confidence.

Blank's core truth still holds: no business plan survives first contact with customers. But with AI handling much of the hypothesis testing and humans focusing on emotional assessment, teams can iterate faster and more precisely than ever.

You can get started today by going to https://www.genway.ai/try-it-free. Tap into previously unheard voices to build more customer-centric products and become a 10x researcher.