Customer Reviews

If You Build It Will They Come: Three Steps to Test and Validate Any Market Opportunity

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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This is a good customer-driven approach to developing a product. It is logical, makes sense.
It can be used both my bootstrapping entrepreneurs and by large companies developing a new product.
That said, I wish the book had a table with the framework handy, as well as a process-chart,
and "field notes" to use while executing on the market validation.

Notice how the reviews for this book are coming from Austin, where the author is based.
Silicon Valleys entrepreneurs should read it too before taking on VC money. ;)

My colleague and friend Rob Adams has written this great book about how to evaluate opportunities. All the books about the philosophy of entrepreneurship are great, but we need more hands-on advice. I see folks who want to be entrepreneurs every day, and often they don't know where to start. I urge them to become as much an expert on the industry as possible, above all else "find a need and fill it." Then talk to potential customers, get inside their heads and inside their lives, listen to them! So Rob was preaching to the choir when I got into his book. Virtually any entrepreneur -- including and perhaps especially non-profit and social entrepreneurs -- will advance their chance of success by studying Rob's patterns of thoughts and actions as described in this book. The table of contents tells you what you need to know to understand how this book can help you.

Adams is a great writer and the subject is well organized. The book emphasizes the simple truth that the only way to find out what customers "may" buy is by digging down into the pain they are experiencing and working with them to deliver a product that addresses that pain in a timely fashion.

The focus on keeping perspective (not deluding yourself) and on failing early are appreciated. There is always a tension between persistence and knowing when a project/product is going no-where.

While we could all use an "easy" solution, the message is clear. It will take many hours of seeking out people with needs, soliciting feedback, and building an on-going partnership with them; and this through-out and after the initial development cycle. Adams is blunt about the number of contacts required per nugget of truth. This is work!

Just finished this book last night - couldn't recommend it more strongly. It's about market validation and refining your concept before pouring money into building a product. Mr. Adams incorporates lean, fail fast, and data driven studies. He pushes you out from behind the computer and encourages you get market feedback before you start. That way, you're on the third iteration of your idea before you spend money on building out. For anyone starting out or looking to expand their product, this book can talk them through how to effectively execute a market study in sixty days.

Where other business books give you theories, traits, or mentalities, this book gives you a step by step process that will tell you if your idea is ready for launch. It's in my top three business books I've read. If you get one book, get this one.

Dr. Adams has done a great job in laying out a step by step process for launching a new product that helps eliminate the irrational decision making chain that so many businees people fall into when taking a product to market that they are so heavily emotionally and financially invested in. Sorry to say, our company had been a long time practitioner of the "ready, fire, fire, aim" methodology, but fortunately was able to apply a number of the steps in this book to the recent acquistion of a competitor.

As a veteran of multiple technology evaluation projects worldwide, I found this book to be an excellent summary of the processes to be followed in product development. Too often entrepreneurs fall in love with their idea but do not seek reviews or comments from other players or potential customers in the marketplace. Dr. Adam's book is an excellent guide to processes in developing a validation strategy and making the decision to proceed with an idea into the marketplace. It's well paced, thorough, and I would recommend it to our clients.

As a business consultant and entrepreneur, I really appreciated Rob's take on using market validation principles to help guide the development and launch of your product or service. He takes what could be a challenging topic and boils it down to a practical set of actions that any business leader can take to improve his or her chances for a successful market launch. I really enjoyed this book!

One thing I really like about the way Rob writes his books is that he tends to be matter of fact if not blunt about the most important points. His books are part inspiration and part field manual. In his first book, "A Good Hard Kick in the Ass," Chapter 2 was dedicated to understanding customer value. In my copy, that chapter has more yellow highlighted sections than not. Understanding what customers value (and pay for) has become a foundational part of the educational message of the Center for Entrepreneurial Growth.

"If You Build It, Will They Come?" is a deep dive into this concept. Rob states that "Most companies take a ready, fire, fire, fire, aim approach to delivering their products or services." As you might expect, he advises taking a ready, aim, fire approach and in fact, that is the way his book is laid out. "If You Build It..." comes as close to an instruction manual as you will find and Rob even presents an outline for the timing and cost of this effort. You should plan on spending 10% of your development budget and allocate 60 days to accomplish a Market Validation effort. The rest of the book tells you how to do it.

"If You Build It..." is packed with ideas but delivers them in a concise package and a quick read...but you won't read it once and put it on the shelf. This is stuff you can use today.

For a more detailed review as well as other topics on entrepreneurship, check out

Dr. Adams does a great job getting beyond an academic assessment of what you need to do to identify and capitalize on an opportunity in the marketplace. This book is full of practical advice designed to make you think expansively about your product & how you should roll it out. Although the book is probably intended for people in a technology field, its lessons are applicable across a wide range of businesses.

If you're looking for a single book that will help you learn the lessons of business classics and apply them to today's competitive world, this is it.