How would you go about creating a customer advisory board for an early stage mhealth startup?

It sounds like you have a wound care physical product? Is that correct? Who will b the end user? Nurses in home health? Hospital nurses and general and trauma surgeons? Who buys products for these end users? Cmo of large health systems? Ultimately, you may need to consider cardinal health, McKesson for distribution? How will you manufacture this product? Check out alibaba for starters. How much will your customer pay for this product? How is it better than what they are using now? Will this product allow burn victims to be discharged earlier? Will it reduce hospitalization in nursing home residents? You will need to assemble a team, probably an MBA for starters... What is the total addressable market? Start a conversation with the buyers for your local healthcare system and ask them their pain points in wound care? Work with a local physician who might be a champion user and persuade administration to try a pilot with your product. In short get one customer who will pay a certain price for it, consider presales, like tile is doing now. This should get you started! Once you have these answers you may be ready for a grass roots fundraising campaign on medstartr! I am happy to help! Best, dr hodge

You should be so lucky that someone will steal your idea. The truth is that its all about execution and not ideas. Facebook wasn't the first social network, they just executed better. Same for Instagram, Yammer and Airbnb - all Billion dollar companies built in public.

It really depends on whether this is ultimately a top-down or bottom-up approach and to what extent the end-user experience is compelling enough to act as a forcing function to enterprise adoption. A bottom-up distributed mobile app must be both viral and incredible engaging. Without proof that you have that (or absent proof, strong conviction) most are better off attempting to sell top-down. Happy to talk this through in a call

I have built several multi-million dollar businesses using (2) very simple questions: "What makes you say that...." and "Tell me more...." No matter what someone says to you, you just keep asking one (or both) of the questions. If you do it 4 or 5 times in a row you'll learn everything you ever wanted to know.

Steve Blank has already covered this in depth in his book 4 Steps to the Epiphany, as well as a video here: http://startupweekend.wistia.com/medias/tao3s8hf7l My approach is based on his outline, with a twist. 1) I try and conduct the interviews at the customers office or place of work, at minimum on their devide (computer, mobile phone) so I can ask to see how they work. 2) I never try and sell them on a the solution, but work hard to truly understand if/where the problem is. 3) Always provide guidance to the conversation, but ask open ended questions. 4) Ask questions like "What do you do 3 minutes before, and after, you do that action (or use our product)? Other tips would be - Write down the words they use. Metaphors and taxonomies are VERY important to ensuring your product is approachable. - Use 3 simple slides: Problem, Current Solutions, Proposed Solution Hope that helps.