Cindy Alvarez
cindyalvarez.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
Cindy Alvarez writes about customer development, user interviews, and product management for startups.
What HN saysHN commenters give no opinion of the blog itself; it is linked for startup and product management advice, such as customer interviews and MVP testing.
28HN people shared it
2linked it in comments
44stories submitted
184story points
12 years agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Customer development - Are you asking the right questions?5 people · 10 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 2Customer Development Interviews How-to: Finding People2 people · 20 points · first shared 2010 · 3 comments on HN
- 3Acquisition and Activation, Personified (AARRR Metrics)2 people · 4 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 4Your Best Customers Probably Aren’t The Ones You Think Are2 people · 3 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 5You Don’t Get to Define ‘Quality’1 people · 44 points · first shared 2009 · 15 comments on HN
- 6Revenue, Personified1 people · 20 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 7Books To Make You A Better Product Manager1 people · 8 points · first shared 2009 · 2 comments on HN
- 8Why You Must Solve the First User Experience, First1 people · 8 points · first shared 2009 · 1 comments on HN
- 9Bad Copy Kills – Read It Out Loud1 people · 6 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 10Poke Your Bruises for Better Customer Feedback1 people · 6 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 11The Myth of the Self-Starter1 people · 5 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 12Posterous: great example of capitalizing on existing user behaviors1 people · 4 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 13Reasons Why You Have No Credibility with Engineering1 people · 3 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 14Go Ahead, Be a Flake1 people · 3 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 15The "Good Enough" Formula for Segmenting an Existing Market1 people · 3 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
mooreds · 2015-01-27
I worked for a small company when my wife had our children. I was the first employee to have a child while at the job. I was lucky enough to be senior enough to negotiate the parental leave that I needed.
It was unpaid. My employer did not force me to take vacation time, which was kind of them.
A month or two before I left, the COO created a parental leave policy, and I was glad to see it codified.
This was a company with under 25 employees, but they could have benefited from this post (and this one, which the OP linked to: http://www.cindyalvarez.com/best-practices/its-not-okay-to-not-have-a-… ).
aoporto · 2011-11-22
I think this can still be considered an intermediate MVP that can be tested. The goal of lean is to eliminate waste, so there is a risk that an MVP with working code has no demand whatsoever.
One drawback to this approach is that it may give you false negatives. What if you landing page copy doesn't work or your AdWords copy is wrong? As with all lean/custdev hacks ymmv. Bottom line is you need to find customers to talk to, otherwise everything is an assumption.
Some other articles that touch on this approach:
http://startupbound.com/how-i-quickly-test-and-validate-startup-ideas/
http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/using-adwords-to-assess-d…
http://www.cindyalvarez.com/best-practices/customer-development-interv…