djsamson

Question Based Selling is a great intro book on how good salespeople approach sales. It has good detail in it as well. Tested Advertising Methods is a must read for learning how people respond to copy (can be applied to ppc ads, direct emails, etc).

I plan on moving to SV and working for a startup, then launching my own venture one day. I feel like this is an easier transition and I'll be able to accumulate some more experience and assets before I develop something on my own.

Thank you for all the comments. I love checking in with the HN community before doing customer dev interviews. This has saved me alot of time.

This is a good preliminary test, but more customer development needs to be done. You need to have problem and then solution interviews. Don't just show them your solution and ask "Will this help?" Of course it will to some extent.

You want to get a really good understanding why these people have this problem and how they've tried going on without your product. Ask them how much they would be willing to pay to get their problem solved. Then ask if your solution is helpful and show them a demo.

Steve Blank is the Godfather of customer development. I highly suggest the Startup Owner's Manual. But if you don't have time to read that all right now, just realize you need some in-depth interviews (preferably in person interviews) and then use the Google Adwords landing page test as a mass scale test.

Good luck.

Motivation to workout. I'm not obese or anything, and I realize the importance of exercise but I still can't seem to find the time to do it more than once a week.

Carwoo sounds interesting and it is similar to what I was thinking. But I think I might be imagining something more aggressive, where the startup sends an e-mail/fax/phone call to dealerships on the customers behalf. Acting as their "agent" almost. Also, it seems CarWoo only includes partnered dealerships. With the method I described a buyer would be able to contact every dealership of their interest. The only issue with this is that since the startup would be more "customer oriented" rather than dealer, it would probably have to charge customers (unlike Carwoo) instead of charging dealers like CarWoo.