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Getting customer feedback is essential in the early stages of your company--but it's what you do with it that determines your fate. Note: A version of this post first appeared on steveblank.com . The art of entrepreneurship and the science of Customer Development is not just getting out of the building and listening to prospective customers

Measures like Price-Earnings Ratio and EBITDA multiples are just gross generalizations of the value of your business. Here's how to determine the real value. Estimating the value of your business is usually calculated through measures such as earnings, EBITDA, and “comp” multiples.

It's not just BP that's trying to brush their mistakes from the oil spill under the rug. Soon after publishing a piece on BP's greenwashing of its first post-Deepwater Horizon CSR report, Fast Company received a tip from a reader about the Coast Guard's recently released Incident Specific Preparedness Review ( PDF )--a mammoth report from a group of NGOs, members of the oil industry, and government officials that details just how badly the Coast Guard screwed up the Gulf disaster (and, incidentally, unlike other reports of its nature, wasn't publicized, although it is readily available on the Coast Guard's website if you dig around for it)