08/07/2026
❗ Know your customer – the one idea that ran through the entire evening with Bret Waters
On June 23rd, ZAS Ventures hosted Bret Waters in Kyiv at Kooperativ — in partnership with Kooperativ, KOOP Lito, and Techosystem.
Bret is a Silicon Valley serial software founder, investor, mentor, and Stanford lecturer, and he came to share the "New Startup Playbook": how to turn an early-stage idea into a market-ready, fundable venture.
If there was one thread tying his whole talk together, it was this: almost every mistake he's seen founders make traces back to not really understanding who their customer is.
🎯 Forget the business plan, study the customer
Bret opened with Steve Blank's line — no business plan survives first contact with customers. Investors don't fund decks; they fund evidence that you deeply understand a real customer problem.
🎯 Money doesn't fix a weak customer thesis
Bret's own cautionary tale: he raised $5M once, burned through it in a year, and the company died — without ever nailing down who he was really building for. Years later, $750K and a clear read on the customer built a company that never needed outside funding again.
🎯 Every tool in the framework serves the same goal
The Launch Path builds on Design Thinking, Customer Development, Lean Startup/MVP, and the Business Model Canvas — different tools, same purpose: force founders to validate the customer before they scale.
Attendees walked away with:
✅ A framework straight from a Stanford Continuing Studies educator and author of The Launch Path
✅ A clear, structured way to build a startup for success — not just speed
✅ A lens for applying that global standard to the unique, resilient Ukrainian startup ecosystem
We highly suggest grabbing a copy of Bret’s book “The Launch Path: Getting from a Startup Idea to a Launch-Ready Venture”. Other books he recommended were “The Lean Startup " by Eric Ries and “The Four Steps to the Epiphany” by Steve Blank.
Thank you to everyone who attended the event! And of course, thank you, Bret, for your support for Ukraine! 💛💙
