I can't seem to find myself in agreeance with what the author has written. It might be in the way it was written (author could have been pressed for time and compressed what he wanted to say).

How many years have we validated the effectiveness of "Get out of the Building" already? Not talking to customers before version 1.0 is against this highly effective principal.

Lean startup is not just 'iterate'. It's really a "huge customer feed back loop." You iterate based on things you learned from customers.

Replacing 'tech' with restaurant might make it easier to understand. The author is suggesting releasing food to users at a restaurant opening, prior to actually testing whether people want that food, think the food is good, or even if that food is appealing to the correct customer segment.

What the author and most commenters have already gleamed, is that customers can be wrong. But they can also be right. The same principles apply to founders as well. Here is a quote from Eric Ries:

## _Learning and executing customer feedback skills is as important as coding._ ##

Carefully snipped from: http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2010/09/visionarys-lame...
Go read the entire post.
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This is where data, focus groups, customer feedback, and collaborative decision-making get their bad rap. In many cases, these activities lead to bad outcomes: watered down vision, premature abandonment, and local maxima.

When visionaries say “but customers don’t know what they want!” they are right. That’s the problem with false dichotomies: each side has a kernel of truth within it. You cannot build a great product simply by obeying what customers say they want. First of all, how do you know which customers to listen to? And what do you do when they say contradictory things?

...

I recommend a mantra that I learned from Steve Blank: always consider your job to find out if there is a market for the product as currently specified. Don’t try and change the vision every time you get new data. Instead, get out of the building and look for customers for whom your product vision is a slam-dunk fit. If and only if, after exhaustive searching, you cannot find any customers that fit the profile, is it time to have a serious conversation about whether and how the vision should be modified (a pivot).

...
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Now read the post title again, "Avoid Customer Feedback Before Version 1.0".

You see, its actually fundamental to keep the feedback loop going _as early as possible_. Even before version 1.0. This is why I don't agree with the article author. Again, it might be because of the way the article was written (it's always good to have more details) and trying to compress a startup in several paragraphs is near impossible.

Your goal isn't to put out a 'complete' app. Your MVP should be focusing on only providing a solution for the very defined simple and tiny problem which you found. In that exercise you will have to filter through customer feedback. Feedback includes metrics gathering whether or not people are using your product and if people are clicking on the wrong stuff. This kind of feedback helps you correct usability issues.

You cannot just go out and ask users "What features do you want." That is nuts. You need to script it carefully, you need to engage and ask users about ambient ideas, feelings, thoughts. Sometimes you also just need to let the customer speak. You will need to develop customer skills. There 'might' be some interesting discoveries along the way.

Eric Ries and Ash Maurya recommend about about 30 minutes for customer interviews and the script is VERY carefully put together as to AVOID "what features do you want".