Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Jeff Katzenberg has a great track record – head of the studio at Paramount, chairman of Disney Studios, co-founder of DreamWorks and now chairman of NewTV. It helped that in the nuclear winter that followed the crash, 2001 – 2004, startups and VCs were extremely risk averse and amenable to new ideas that reduced risk.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Jon Sebastiani , founder and CEO of KRAVE Jerky , a company that got its start in my class at Berkeley back in 2011 and was recently acquired by Hershey. Taking My Class.

Lean 120

Lean Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder Channel 120

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

It was fall 2004, and the presidential election was in full swing. One day, we became convinced that a killer app for IMVU would be to sell a presidential debate bundle, where our customers could put on a Bush or Kerry avatar, and then engage in mock debates with each other. What is customer development?

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Those rates gave us a map that told us a lot about our customers; insights that proved stable even when the company grew orders of magnitude bigger. Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing. BillSeitz - yes, but that was already true back in 2004.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

But the early customers all compared it to MySpace. This was 2004, and we had never even heard of MySpace, let alone had any understanding of social networking. It required hearing customers say it over and over again for us to take a serious look, and eventually to realize that social networking was core to our business.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

I read a ton of existing literature and came up with a formal methodology for search I called Customer Development. That resulted in a new process for Search: Customer Development + traditional product management/Waterfall Engineering. Berkeley asked me to teach a class in Customer Development.

Lean 324

Lean Georgia Michigan Business Model 324

Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Michael Mondavi , founder and coach of Folio Fine Wine Partners. In 2004, he launched Folio Fine Wine Partners with his wife Isabel and their children, Rob, Jr.

Silicon Valley 143

Silicon Valley California Entrepreneur Cofounder 143