Are you thinking of a career change? Perhaps you like the idea of starting your own business, or even developing something new by setting up a start-up? In that case, read on, and I'll share with you a few things that we've learned on the way.

We've just fallen into the validation trap. Again.

It's a sneaky bugger, and at least we're getting better at identifying it after the fact. But it's hard to avoid. The irony of blogging about this on Valentine's day is not lost to me either.

This time it happened during customer development interviews. Here's how it happened...

Ok, confession time. For someone who spends an awful lot of time proselytising that other people should get out and get talking to potential customers as much as possible, we've not always walked the walk ourselves. So please view this as a sort of morality tale, and learn from our mistakes, so that you don't have to repeat them.

We're currently doing customer development. One of our strategies has been to set up a Facebook group where patients can ask us questions. Our value proposition for the group is quite simple. "We are two UK-trained GPs. Please ask us your questions about high blood pressure and we will attempt to answer them as best we can. We regret that we cannot give specific medical advice. We want to know what it is that you want to know."

This is an open letter to ask you to consider recruiting GPs. I know it seems prestigious to have a “specialist” working for you, but there are some really good reasons why a start-up could be better off recruiting a generalist...

At itamus, whenever we do a customer development interview, we always ask to be introduced to more warm leads. "Do you know anyone else who it would be helpful for us to talk to?" We also ask for an introduction, usually by forwarding an email. This is the text of the email that we send:-

Donald Trump. Love him or hate him, and there are plenty on both sides, he’s pulled off an historic electoral upset.

What’s interesting to me, is how he’s used cutting edge business strategy taken from the tech industry to do it.

Hillary raised more money than him. Hillary was more qualified than him. Hillary will likely end up with more of the popular vote than him. By all of the accepted metrics of modern political campaigns he shouldn’t have won. And yet he did. The big question now, is how?