These are the slides from Sean Tierney's talk to the ventures of the SEED SPOT incubator in Phoenix on 9/30/14. In it he shares a high-level overview of Customer Development and then digs into how he's doing it in his latest venture: Artiledge.com.

1. Practical CustDev
Unearthing your optimal business model
Sean Tierney | sean@grid7.com

5. Make this stuff more real
Inspire to go learn
Start your canvas

7. Initial Premises
Artists aren’t marketers nor salespeople.
Galleries take huge commissions.
Believe there’s opportunity to apply lifecycle marketing concepts in
the realm of the art world.
There are aggregation sites but nobody stepping up to work to
represent the artists.
This effort will likely have a community component.
Want max alignment with artists. Put our money where our mouth is.

8. Sean moves
to California
!
Splash
page up &
running.
Cards for FT
VA gets us
a list of 350
festival
artists
Email blast to
350 festival
artists
Scrape dirs of
Laguna-area
artists.
First
CustDev
interview
with artist
Solid week of 3 interviews/day
!
!
Final interviews
!
!
Start FB
branding
campaign to
Cust Audience
Cohort
finalized.
Announce
participants

9. Let’s look at the data

33. Evolution of the model
Started as “Free seminar + $10k consulting giveaway”
“Pilot Program of Artiledge Selling System free for one
lucky artist”
Commission-only single artist
Cohort of non-competitive artists commission-only

34. Other Lessons
FB as valid acquisition channel (13 leads for $50)
Irrational fears of piracy
Opportunity to reduce friction & remorse of purchase
Frustration not with galleries but festivals
Economy widely cited as the problem

35. Open Questions
How much can we actually move the needle?
What is the 80/20 for doing so?
Who constitutes the ideal candidate for us?
How to track offline sales?
How to partition our machinery from artists’?
How to systematize to a degree where it doesn’t require us?

36. Need a volunteer!