Thomas G. Stemberg Quotes

You have to understand who your customer is and her motivations and marry it to what's happening in the outside world.

When you know who your customers are, that can give you an edge on the competition.

You can always change your branding or hire lawyers, but it's critical that you figure out if you have product market fit, and if you don't, figure out how to course-correct without getting stuck.

The art of entrepreneurship and the science of Customer Development is not just getting out of the building and listening to prospective customers. It's understanding who to listen to and why.

Products are sold because they solve a problem or fill a need. Understanding problems and needs involves understanding customers and what makes them tick.

Using science to tell us what customers are looking for is second nature for us here.

We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.

Customers don't know what they want. There's plenty of good psychology research that shows that people are not able to accurately predict how they would behave in the future. So asking them, 'Would you buy my product if it had these three features?' or 'How would you react if we changed our product this way?' is a waste of time. They don't know.

Most of all, I discovered that in order to succeed with a product you must truly get to know your customers and build something for them.

Our theory is, if you need the user to tell you what you're selling, then you don't know what you're selling, and it's probably not going to be a good experience.

Through our effective campaign-management strategies, we're seizing opportunities to capture additional insights on customer behaviors, allowing us to reach and communicate with them more effectively.

Betting all your funds on the belief that you know what consumers want and are willing to pay for is like jumping into a river to test its depth - you'll need a lot of luck to stay afloat. To have a truly successful product launch, the conversations with your customers must start long before you write your first line of code.

I think, when I see entrepreneurs, they tend to talk about the market and the industry - which is obviously very important, but the most important thing is you're product. What are you selling? And does it really have product-market fit?

I mean, at the simplest level, my entire background was in marketing, which largely is about understanding a customer, being able to be intuitive, being able to be empathetic.

I purposely got involved in the American market, as I'm really interested in it. I find the way they do marketing there really cool.

Knowing your customer inside and out is mission-critical, and it takes time. It's impossible to hit on the insights that will ultimately decide your company's fate without putting them to the test - literally - even if that takes longer than you'd have liked.

I think it's about being really smart about hitting the right consumer product spaces at the right time.

Part of Customer Development is understanding which customers make sense for your business.

Apple has beautiful design, beautiful product, incredibly functional. But mostly, it's about picking product, getting behind it, marketing it, and introducing it to a customer. What they've done just inspires me.

Giving up your core business in search of a phantom audience is not wise.

I think my sister and I just focus on working hard. We started off working with Wal-Mart on our first clothing line as an extension of our personal brand when we were 12, and we got to learn about being aware of what was in the market and what wasn't.

Every business needs to get out of their own mindset and into the aspirational mindsets of their customers and clients and create services and products that are beyond their customers' imagination but will be what they 'gotta have' in the future.

When you let travelers vote with their clicks, and you put that at the center of your decision-making, you build the product they want, and ultimately, their business will follow.

Launching a successful product or startup has little to do with luck. Any business that gains traction on the market is the result of very careful strategizing and market analysis, not to mention the development of an original product or service.

For what we want to accomplish in the future, we have to be able to view everything from the eyes of the customer.