Why An Outsourced Development Team Should Be Part of CustDev

"We dropped $100k on an MVP – and… just silence. Ads, retargeting, special offers – nothing moves the needle."

"Retention is basically zero – people sign up, and then immediately disappear."

"Things looked fine at first – we had some downloads… and then? Nothing. Total wall."

We hear this all the time. And trust us, it’s rarely about "bad marketing" or "a couple missing features." In 42% of startup failure cases the main reason nobody actually talked to the people they were building products for.  

Even the most brilliant business ideas fall flat without proper customer development (CustDev). If that thought hits a little too close to home, good.

In this article, we’re breaking down our customer development (custdev) approach in real projects, explaining why it matters for experienced outsourcing development teams too, and detailing how it helps build problem-solving products.

Expect real stories, mistakes, and valuable lessons learned the hard way so you won't have to.

Let's start with the basics. If you’re already familiar with customer development, feel free to skip ahead to the case studies. If not, here’s what you need to know.

The methodology was introduced by investor Steve Blank and became the foundation for the Lean Startup approach. The core idea of custdev is simple: don't build a product based on assumptions. Instead, validate your hypotheses by talking to real people. Through these conversations, you can learn about the problems people are currently solving, what frustrates them, what they’re already paying for, and what they wish existed.

CustDev isn't just asking, "Do you like this?" It's a structured process designed to uncover the actual needs of future users. The goal is to determine if the problem you want to solve exists and, if so, how significant it is. Otherwise, you might build something that no one needs.

And no, custdev isn’t a one-time thing. It’s a cycle with four key stages:

• Customer Discovery. First, you speak with real users to determine whether the pain point is valid and worth addressing. Hypotheses are tested, not assumed.
• Customer Validation. Next, you build a minimum viable product (MVP) and test it. The feedback you receive helps you adjust the value proposition and determine whether people are willing to pay.
• Customer creation. It's time to grow. You bring your product to market, attract users, and continue gathering insights as you scale.
• Company Building. You formalize processes and expand the team, but the user voice remains central. It's your most honest data source.

This process helps reduce uncertainty early on, establish a clear value hypothesis, and ensure that your resources are allocated toward creating something that will actually work.

Let's be real. Startup life doesn't exactly follow the step-by-step guides on how to perform the "perfect" CustDev. In our experience, there are usually two paths:

• The ideal scenario is when the founder hires a research agency that delivers polished reports with charts, insights, and a complete analysis of user needs;
• The real one is where every cent counts, and you're expected to do customer development yourself, even if you're not sure how to start..

That’s where a solid tech partner can make a difference. An startup outsourced development team isn't just there to write code. They can also help shape the product from day one. In fact, we often run CustDev sessions with our clients because they add real value to the process.

• The team gains a deeper understanding of the product – designers can craft effective conversion flows, and developers can assess potential system loads and choose the right tech stack;
• It clarifies your priorities – уou’ll reach the market faster with a lean minimum viable product (MVP) that solves real problems, not imaginary ones;
• It creates a long-term roadmap – you won’t need to invent every feature from scratch, because insights from CustDev will naturally feed your backlog as your product grows.

No, this isn't the perfect example of customer development. But it works. This approach helps founders clearly see their users with fewer assumptions and more evidence.

We don't mean to sound too strict, but we never start a project without first conducting a thorough discovery phase. Skipping this step usually ends up costing more – both in terms of our reputation as an outsourced software development team and in terms of the client’s budget. Below, we'll review the tools we use to gather requirements and understand the needs of the target audience.

We start with in-depth interviews with both external users and customers and internal stakeholders, support representatives, and sales teams. Although the questions are tailored to each project, the goal remains the same:

• What problem is the product solving?
• How is that problem handled today without your product?
• Which current solutions work, and which are frustrating?

When we need insights from dozens or even hundreds of users, we create and distribute surveys to the target audience or niche communities. This allows us to confirm what we’ve learned in interviews and identify common patterns.

Need to know if the market is interested in your idea? Start with a simple MVP and see how people react. A lightweight version of the product helps you measure interest, user behavior, objections, and feedback.

That’s what we did with OpenOrigin, a platform meant to showcase AI models, as an outsource web development company. We created an MVP where partners could post project descriptions and users could save or try out the ones they liked. The founder used this MVP to gauge demand and realized that full-scale development wasn't worth the risk. The project pivoted, and the core features became part of the founder's next idea.  

Being an outsource software development company we don’t do 100-page reports. Instead, we keep things practical with competitor SWOT analyses, interface references, screenshots of smart features, and, when needed, keyword data to map out search trends.

Before designing a single screen, we map out the site structure, key flows, and logic diagrams. We also build an MVP feature tree to set clear priorities: what absolutely needs to be in the first release and what can wait.

To go deeper, we often use:

• Expert interviews – with analysts, consultants, and senior team members who know the industry inside and out;
• Design sprints – short collaborative sessions where we co-create product flows with the client;
• Field research – where we observe how people actually work on the ground (e.g., in restaurants, retail, or logistics hubs).

At this point, CustDev stops being just a development phase and becomes a lens that brings the product into sharper focus and helps us build something that truly matters.  

Want help running CustDev for your product? Let's talk at free consultation!

Max B. CEO

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Now, let's move from theory to practice. Here’s how a round of customer development helped us identify bottlenecks in a company’s internal platform and transform a “quick bug fix” request into a significant redesign of core processes.

A client we’d previously worked with on a commercial product approached us again – this time to audit their internal platform. The system was used by different departments for various tasks, including inter-team communication, file sharing, project management, and client request tracking.

The initial request sounded simple: “Fix some bugs, clean up the interface, and make things less frustrating to use.”

However, instead of diving straight into development, we proposed starting with a discovery phase, specifically a round of CustDev interviews. This approach allowed us to move beyond guesswork and gain firsthand insights from the people who use the product daily.

First, we conducted in-depth interviews with ten employees from various departments, including team leads, managers, and technical staff. Our goal was to understand which features they used, the challenges they faced, and how the platform fit into their daily workflows. This phase lasted about a month.

After conducting interviews and surveys, we compiled a comprehensive list of all the issues, suggestions, and ideas that were identified. Each item was categorized as a “Bug”, “Improvement”, or “Idea" and linked to its source – the department or individual who raised it. This helped us understand the context behind each insight and assess its importance.

We used the RICE framework to prioritize tasks, which allows us to objectively evaluate features based on four key criteria:

• Reach: How many people will benefit from the change?
• Impact: How significantly will it improve user experience and workflow?
• Confidence: How certain are we that the improvement is valuable?
• Effort: How much time and resources will it take to implement?

To fine-tune the RICE model for this project, we used ChatGPT to calibrate the appropriate scoring range for each category based on our input. This allowed us to standardize the evaluation process and prioritize tasks accurately.

As a result, we ended up with a structured backlog broken down into three focus areas:

• Performance and stability issues – bugs and technical problems that disrupt daily operations and require immediate attention;
• UX and workflow improvements – enhancements to the UI, mobile usability, and task management features;
• Growth and expansion ideas – suggestions for automation, new features, and department-specific upgrades that unlock future product potential.

Initially, the client thought it was just a matter of "fixing a few bugs." However, the customer development process revealed deeper problems, such as usability gaps, missing features, and a lack of integration, which reduced employee efficiency.

Rather than making minor adjustments, we proposed a more strategic approach based on real user feedback that prioritized what truly mattered. The result? Faster workflows, better internal adoption, and a product roadmap shaped by the people who use the platform daily.

Customer development isn’t just another box to check – it’s how you ensure your product is genuinely useful.

Not sure where to begin with your project? Let's discuss the details and start with custdev!

Max B. CEO

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Sometimes, a client’s team is completely confident in their product logic, but when real users finally try it out, it falls short. That’s when a second round of customer development becomes necessary.

We’re currently wrapping up work on a product called :Puls for Upjet, a tool for organizing and managing corporate events. Since there were no off-the-shelf solutions or close competitors on the market, we had to build the platform and its business logic from scratch. The client had deep domain knowledge and clear requirements, so we relied entirely on the information they provided.

However, the main stakeholders didn’t see :Puls until right before the final release. Development mostly happened behind closed doors, with just two key decision-makers defining the feature set. Our goal was to cover a variety of scenarios and build a flexible, comprehensive tool. However, when it reached actual users, challenges emerged.

Each contributor had a different vision. For example, the designer wanted to introduce more brand elements and visual flair. And the accommodations manager wanted to change how hotel dates were assigned to participants. Meanwhile, other users, such as event managers and logistics staff, struggled to complete basic tasks.

Instead of trying to please everyone from the start, it became clear that we should have anchored the product around one core use case and expanded from there.

To align the product with real-world needs, we took two key steps.

First, we ran focus groups with Upjet team members to identify pain points and adjust the product's functionality to better support each role involved in the process.

Second, we relied on our product-first mindset. From the beginning, we anticipated complexity, so our designer created a three-tier design system and component library. This enabled developers to implement rapid updates, even when significant changes to the UI were necessary.

While some early ideas had to be dropped, clear prioritization helped us transform :Puls into a genuinely useful internal tool. The client has already used it to host one successful internal event, and we are now making final adjustments before launching the platform publicly.

An interesting story happened with a restaurant aggregator startup for which we became the technical partner. The founder had correctly identified the pain point: restaurant administrators were overwhelmed by manual bookings and pre-orders. They spent too much time on phone calls, human errors were common, and guests often forgot to cancel, resulting in lost revenue.  

Our solution was to launch an app where each restaurant could create its own profile with menu and booking features, and where customers could manage their reservations and orders directly. We designed streamlined flows for guests and admins alike and delivered a fully functioning product.

However, the real problems arose later, during the onboarding of new restaurants. The process involved heavy bureaucracy, and each new venue had to be registered manually. Additionally, many managers were skeptical about the app’s effectiveness and reluctant to train their staff to use it.

Thus, while the product solved the core issue, it also introduced new operational challenges. We realized that we needed to address these challenges as well by adding automated registration and staff onboarding and creating a clear system of benefits for partner restaurants.

You can develop a product with great logic, a sleek UI, and a perfectly structured backlog, but until you observe how real people interact with it, all of that is just a hypothesis. Even experienced founders can have difficulty predicting how their product will perform in real-world environments shaped by regulations and human behavior.

You can develop a product with great logic, a sleek UI, and a perfectly structured backlog, but until you observe how real people interact with it, all of that is just a hypothesis. Even experienced founders can have difficulty predicting how their product will perform in real-world environments shaped by regulations and human behavior.

That’s why a second round of CustDev isn’t a failure – it’s your safety net. It helps you adjust course, re-evaluate priorities, and adapt before it’s too late. But it only works if your product architecture is flexible enough to support fast changes.

Having trouble scaling your product? We can run a technical audit

Max B. CEO

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We often hear clients say, "Let's skip custdev. We already know everything about our audience." Sometimes, they’re right. There are rare scenarios in which you can jump straight into development without conducting in-depth interviews or large-scale surveys. However, these scenarios are the exception, not the rule. Here are two cases in which CustDev can be replaced by strong, data-backed confidence in either your audience or your product niche.

Sometimes, a business has built so much trust with its customers that they embrace new digital tools right away. That was the case with Beerpoint, a retail chain with over 200 locations and a loyal customer base.

The biggest issue was that plastic loyalty cards were a hassle for shoppers and cashiers alike. So, the idea of a mobile app offering digital bonuses and personalized deals was well-received. Over 250,000 users joined the app after its launch.

The company already had solid analytics in place and knew which features would be popular: family accounts, favorites, reviews, ratings, and entertaining features like "Tried it" or "Want to try." The app improved not only the user experience but also internal metrics. Store KPIs were revised to focus more on retention and customer engagement.

When we added a gamified "Wheel of Fortune" feature with daily giveaways, daily active users (DAUs) increased by 20-30%, peaking at around 26,000 on high-traffic days (Fridays, as you might have guessed).  

This is one of those rare cases where user loyalty and data-driven decisions made deep custdev optional – but only because every product hypothesis had already been validated with real numbers.

Check out the full Beerpoint case study here.

Mobile app for beverage and snacks saler

A story about the development of a mobile app for a large chain of 189 draught beer stores

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The second case in which custdev might take a back seat is when the client has hands-on experience launching similar products and truly understands their users' needs.

Not long ago, we partnered with Sizl, a dark kitchen startup based in Chicago. One of the co-founders, Alexey Kolesnikov, is well known in the industry for his previous project, Local Kitchen. When a founder deeply understands the product, the market, and the user context, developing new features isn’t guesswork. It’s part of a clear business strategy and financial model.

In this case, product development was driven by specific, well-defined goals.

Need to optimize operations? We calculated the required number of kitchen devices based on real order volumes right from the start.

Want to better manage delivery costs? We introduced dynamic pricing and an upsell feature called “Fast Delivery”.

Planning to expand into new areas? We added the “I want Sizl here” feature, letting users mark neighborhoods on the map where they’d like to see a new kitchen station open.

Curious about other solutions we built for Sizl? Read the full case study.

Sizl: How we became the tech partner for the Chicago-based Dark Kitchen Network

This is the story of how to create a dark kitchen app for a fast-growing network offering food delivery and pickup

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Experienced founders understand that product hypotheses are strategic levers for growth, not just educated guesses. In these cases, CustDev is more about targeted validation than broad discovery.

One of the biggest concerns when working with an outsourced team is whether the developers will care about your product or just follow the specifications, line by line. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to determine if your tech partner is reliable.

• Do they ask questions about the real problems you’re trying to solve?
• Do they understand who the product is for and what it should achieve?
• Do they simply do what they’re told – nothing more, nothing less?

That’s why we’re never afraid to ask tough questions, rethink processes, or go back to the discovery phase if needed. Not because we doubt the idea. But because we take ownership of the result and respect the people who’ll use the product every day.