Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Top positive review

5 people found this helpful

Novel and methodical approach to startups!

ByArvind Devarajanon July 12, 2015

The book is good and interesting. Steve gets all his experience on the table, and makes a wonderful case for "Customer development" and "Product development" going in parallel. I have been through a launch of a product, and much of what he mentions in the book have also been my reasons for failure - and that's truly insightful! Many of the situations in the book has had happened in my case - primarily because we've been majorly "product development"- centric and worked on "customer development" after the product had reached the MVP state - when we figured out that things don't work the way customers like.

Also, the examples and case-studies in the book are very nice. Some of them, I can already identify with (Eg: SUN's great start), and many I knew not - but still very apt. Postmortem on failures is a very nice way of explaining way to succeed, and Steve does a good job at it!

Some parts of the book becomes a little monotonous to read. I see some repetitions, and some very obscure text. I could actually skip some pages in between, and still get a gist of the chapters. This is the reason for 4/5 stars.

What I would also appreciate is some stories on "success" stories of startups whose founders have read this book, and have actually applied the methods explained in there. Such stories adds that extra supportive information, and first-hand accounts of success based on this book. I believe future editions of this book might contain such stories...

Top critical review

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23 people found this helpful

Some value, but not worth the time investment

ByBarry Smithon November 4, 2011

I'm very sure that Steven Blank wrote this book with the best of intentions. I even think that he's a smart guy who's had success in advising companies. As an experienced product manager myself, I empathize with the author's war stories and obvious experience.

Unfortunately I find this book to be poorly organized, and worse, sometimes self-contradictory. As the most glaring example, Blank describes the "Customer Discovery Process" as a process of creating testable hypotheses regarding customers and markets, with the goal being to "...understand your customer and their problems, and while doing so get a deep understanding of their business, their organization, and their product needs." Yet he also repeatedly champions what is essentially the opposite approach: "...your purpose in talking to customers is to find customers for the product you are already building."

My frustration with this book is that there's actually some very good content here. But given the lack of a well-articulated guiding thesis, let alone the confusingly contrary advice, it's hard to get the good stuff out. Having read the positive reviews of the book, I can only think that those readers have managed to carefully extract some useful segments and ignored much of the rest. (Or, that as an in-person consultant, Blank is much more effective than as a writer.)

If you're an executive, manager or front line employee in a startup, I'd recommend other books that offer more bang for the buck. Start with Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" and Eric Ries' "The Lean Startup" (if you haven't read them already). Those will give you an excellent understanding of the startup landscape, and a much clearer roadmap to follow.

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Showing 1-3 of 3 reviews(2 star, Verified Purchases). See all 201 reviews

Some value, but not worth the time investment

ByBarry Smithon November 4, 2011

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

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Too many words

ByCinquainon April 27, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

The book is wordy, covers too many topics, and gets carried away in too much little details. The writing is poor and the essence is not condensed into easy to remember principles. I would not recommend this book, save your time and money.

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Why all the 5 stars????

ByWonderluston November 22, 2011

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

The sales message is good, no doubt. If it were just for that I'd give it an "A". But if you go to a restaurant and the food is great but the service is horrible, would you rate it so high?

If this book were a startup, it would have failed long ago. There are FAR too many typos and horrid writing examples in this book to leave it such a high mark. If this were a $15 first, limited-edition printing I'd be a bit more kind but come ON, the copy I just bought is the FOURTH EDITION (5th revised printing). There is absolutely NO excuse for putting out such garbage and charging $40 freaking dollars for it. Inexcusable. Punctuation errors, spelling errors, hard to follow and at times contradictory text. I understand that some readers make excuses because this is just a compilation of notes/classes from the author, Steven Blank. Again, first edition maybe okay but really, if my high-school aged daughter turned this crap in to a teacher she'd have gotten a C-. How can a writer who is claiming to hold a secret to success of any measure depend on THIS as his masterpiece?

Mr. Blank or Mr./Mrs. Editor, FIX all the blatant errors in this book. Then, maybe your message will be a bit easier to read.