Remove 2004 Remove Cofounder Remove Customer Development
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Hear how the Lean Startup began — and helped one company find success: Episode 2 on Sirius XM Channel 111: Eric Ries and Jon Sebastiani

Steve Blank

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
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Is the Lean Startup Dead?

Steve Blank

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
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Lessons Learned: Using AdWords to assess demand for your new.

Startup Lessons Learned

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
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Lessons Learned: SEM on five dollars a day

Startup Lessons Learned

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
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How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people

Startup Lessons Learned

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.

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Entrepreneurs are Everywhere Show No. 28: Magdalena Yesil and Michael Mondavi

Steve Blank

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.

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Entrepreneurs are Everywhere Show No. 28: Magdalena Yesil and Michael Mondavi

Steve Blank

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.