Nivi from VentureHacks just posted asking for examples on Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) that is an important part of the customer development process.

I read a great interview from Sramana Mitra of Greg Gianforte, the CEO of RightNow who practiced MVP and Customer Development long before the
practice was codified by Steve Blank I also realized that some other companies and CEO's who probably had no idea that they were following a customer development process also built successful business using the same principles.

The relevant parts from Sramana's Interview on bootstrapping, MVP and customer development below.

On value of Bootstrapping and talking to customers 
Now here is a good lesson in bootstrapping. I did all of this (talking to customers) before I had a product. When I asked if they would buy it, they said no. Better to find that out early on! I then asked companies why they said no, wrote their answers down, and moved on to the next phone call. This was an iterative process that took about 400 phone calls to complete, but when I was done I was able to hone in on an initial product. In just one month, which is how long it took me to make those 400 phone calls, I knew exactly what customers would buy. That is when I went and built the initial product which took just 45 days because I did not have to build a huge application, just the pieces that I knew customers wanted. Our first customer was PictureTel, followed by Time Warner. They paid us almost nothing - I think it was $250 a month, which was $3,000 a year. It did not matter to me. At that point you just have to get the cash started somehow.

On the value of Bootstrapping and building products that customers will buy 
Bootstrapping is a discovery process. Rather than trying to build an ark, wait for animals to come, and hope the tide rises, you take an incremental approach and discover a legitimate, real-world value proposition. That means you only have to build a product that customers will actually buy. I also like bootstrapping because it forces you to start the sales and learning process sooner. The only activity in an early stage bootstrapping company is selling.