Learn how to develop your customers during the research process without having to resort to ... other means.

1. Mob Rules
Customer development without breaking legs.

2. Yes, the Mob
The Italian mob

3. No, I’m Not In The Mob
Pretty easy to guess

4. I’m a Product Strategist
Founder
Consultant
And a long time ago MF architect

5. Your probably thinking about broken legs
Yes, they do break legs. I hope you’ve paid your debt.

6. But that isn’t how they are successful
You don’t break legs into a billion dollars.

7. Same with UX
You don’t develop customers with great (brute force) code.

8. Big Money = Scams
It’s a thinking persons game.

9. Scams = People
People need to trust you and be a part of the process

10. People = Psychological
Again, no broken legs. Mob picks people to own. Customer development is about
understanding and owning the right customers

11. What the hell does that have to do with product
Research! Better leads = better insights
Copy! Better words = more sales
Features! Better understanding = more effciency

12. In Fact
Customer development is the keystone to managing and understanding your
product.
Without it you are a blind man walking down 42nd street.

13. Sometimes its good
Sometimes...BAM!

14. 5 Things from the mob / 5 in Customer Dev
● Sourcing
● Validating
● Incentivizing
● Interviewing
● Tracking

15. Sourcing
The mob doesn’t go after everyone, and neither should “we.”
Mob finds people that are “around” (they pick carefully over months and years)
We have to find people in the right place (we don’t have time, but we have tech)

16. Validating
The mob reaches out slowly to see if you are worth using. They really focus on
disqualifying people.
We have a quicker cycle, but we can use tools like google forms to qualify our
leads. Teams often want to qualify, but disqualifying is just as important.

17. Incentivizing
The mob knows just what someone wants - money (but also sex and access,
depending on the situation - Senator Huey Long was a millionaire, but he wanted
a personal army)
Understanding what people want is an important, yet often overlooked, piece of
the pie. You don’t need an Amazon Gift Card all the time.

18. Interviewing
The mob knows how to get what it needs. By any means neccessary.
Again - we can’t use baseball bats - but we need to understand how to use
pressure to get the most out of our participants. Make them make a choice during
interviews and when the time is right, make sure they stand by it with a choice (i.e.
make them buy on the spot)

19. Tracking
If you live by the code - the mob has no problems. BUt, they need to make sure,so
they keep an eye on you
After interviews, you should have an idea of a “persona’s” behavior. You’ll need to
have a methodology in place to keep track to ensure you make the right decisions.

20. Remember
● Sourcing
● Validating
● Incentivizing
● Interviewing
● Tracking

21. Why are they good?
Matrtix on knowledgable and communicative - same as the mob is for useful/dirty.

22. Profile + Reputation
They have a great reputation.

23. Like Engineers = 1 10xer is better than 10
engineersWe are researchers, so we don’t want to do one...but if you can get to 4 or 5
qualitatively = BONANZA

24. Mob ain’t great - but they are effective
Take what you’ve learned and go be an earner ;-).