“No business plan survives the first contact with a customers” - Steve Blank

The point is to talk with your customers before launch, during launch, after launch and forever. You might be solving a problem or working on something amazing when the world might not be ready for it. OR the problem might not be big enough for you to pursue the business idea

For example, Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape was the first one to pursue the cloud computing service concept with his new venture LoudCloud in early 2000s. The company didn’t do well but in 5-7 years cloud computing is in, and everyone is jumping on it.

On the same token Apple does not have a culture of doing any customer survey. Like Henry Ford, they believe that the customer does not know what they want. I see their point. Most people did not want an iPhone, iPod, iPad or the Mac until they were shown one.