How to Combine Customer Development and Sales Together

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When does customer development stop and sales begin? I would argue that customer development really never stops, but it becomes a smaller portion as you become more confident within your product market fit. Having a list of assumptions, hypotheses around the customer side and the customer journey and the personas is critical. And having the ability to validate both within those conversations is critical.

Our guest today is Artem Kroupenev, VP of Strategy at Augury.

Augury is a leader in a category they helped to define known as “machine health.” The company sells products that combine hardware, AI, and SaaS within industrial manufacturing.

Artem joined the team at the very beginning of its journey and helped shape strategies for how the team measured product-market fit, go-to-market, and eventually, a strategy for designing a brand new market category they could compete in.

In our conversation today, we dive deep into measurable product-market fit and category-creation strategies. Artem shares particular wisdom on:

Augury’s storyboard-based approach to product vision
How to sell to a limited pool of customers
The REV (revenue, engagement and value) model from measuring product-market fit
When founders should start exploring creating a new category to operate in

You can follow Artem on Twitter at @artemkroupenev You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.