About

Customer development and new businesses

Thanks to the work of Steve Blank, and of the Lean Startup movement, the way that new businesses are built has changed over the last few years. A generation of entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs has absorbed the importance of getting out of the building; talking to customers; learning how they go about their work; and engaging in a series of fast iterations between product development and customer development. All with the goal of attaining product-market fit as quickly as possible. Before the cash runway comes to an end.

Often, the founding team of a new venture lacks some of the deep domain expertise that is needed to do a first class job of customer development. And sometimes, the team is learning the process of customer development for the first time. This is when we think a team of domain experts, well versed in the techniques of customer development, can add a lot of value.

NBD Associates

NBD Associates is a boutique consulting firm, founded by Nina Demediuk to help customers iterate more quickly to product-market fit — using the techniques publicized by the Lean Startup movement and Steve Blank’s customer development methodologies.

Nina believes there is a huge, untapped pool of talent represented by women who have deep market insights as a result of many years in key management roles in various industries, but who are now engaged in the activities of parenting and thus want rewarding but not full time work.

These underutilized but highly skilled individuals are the perfect talent pool for a customer development consultancy — because they have an unparalleled depth of industry expertise; and are available for projects that can be intensive; but do not necessarily require a long term, multi-year full time commitment.

NBD Associates leverages this rarified talent pool for its consulting engagements, and Nina assembles a custom team for each project from among a broad network of associates, based on the specific industry expertise and skill sets required by the project.

Nina Demediuk

Nina Demediuk has over 18 years experience in the commercialization of high tech products in a variety of industries. She has experience in both product management and project management, in industries including edtech, computer accessories and telecom products. She is also an expert in the software and hardware product development process.

Nina’s first job was as an engineer for Kearfott Guidance and Navigation, building test equipment for the Mark V project. She moved on to be Product Line Manager at Kensington developing products such as trackballs, power centers and surge suppressors, for all of which she had P&L responsibility. Then Nina was Director of Product Management for the Netopia, Inc., Internet Access Division, responsible for project & product management of all routers.

From her operational roles in these leading companies, Nina learned just how challenging it is to get product-market fit for a new technology, and personally explored many of the methodologies that are now popularized by Steve Blank and Eric Ries.

Since 2002, Nina has been a parent, and knows first hand what a powerful (but underutilized) talent pool is represented by the women with whom she has had daily interactions over the last decade. Nina has been an active participant in the San Francisco Bay Area private school and volunteer worlds, serving as San Francisco Art Institute Council member, room parent and school auction committee member at French American International School, soccer team manager, and advisory board member of the Sunset Youth Orchestra, among other volunteer activities.

As a result of this experience, Nina has an extensive network of engaged parents, and of teachers in a substantial fraction of the San Francisco Bay Area’s premier schools. This grass roots network of engaged parents and teachers is a perfect testing ground for innovative new approaches to K-12 education, and Nina and her team are particularly interested in seeking out and helping new ventures of this type.

In 2012, Nina realized that there was a huge unmet need (better customer development) and a huge underutilized talent pool (parents with deep industry expertise who want non-full time but challenging roles), and decided to form NBD Associates to leverage the talent pool to address the need.

Nina received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers University, and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology, and has lived in San Francisco, California since 1991.

View Nina Demediuk’s profile