SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. When It’s Darkest Men See the Stars - Steve Blank , November 24, 2010 When It’s Darkest Men See the Stars. but: Something is Still Missing.

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Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how Silicon Valley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. After I retired, Jerry Engel , director of the Lester Center on Entrepreneurship , at U.C.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

PS1- I run a small software startup in Brazil and just found out about Customer Development and your blog (I’ve been reading and listening to everything I can get my hands on online, like Venturehacks and Ries’ blog). You can get away with effective behavior in a large company.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. Reply Ashu Sharma , on April 27, 2010 at 11:44 pm Said: Steve, Great post! Good stuff too.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# Reply Why Startups are Agile and Opportunistic -- Pivoting the Business Model , on April 14, 2010 at 6:32 am Said: [.]

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Reply steveblank , on May 25, 2010 at 1:05 am Said: Tom McMurray. Reply George John , on October 27, 2009 at 9:43 pm Said: Steve – who was the fluid dynamics PhD that you helped turn into a Sequoia VC? Peter Kazanjy , on November 19, 2009 at 10:36 am Said: Yup. be a user of software (for the consumer use case).

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Venture Capital | Tagged: Entrepreneurs « Customer Development Manifesto: Market Type (part 4) Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) » 16 Responses Jon Ziskind , on September 14, 2009 at 9:19 am Said: Steve – Great post and really great advice.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Reply Dan Hodgins , on November 13, 2009 at 1:12 am Said: Hi Steve, Just listened to your “Retooling Early Stage Development&# for about the 10th time tonight as I was cleaning my room. Your results may vary.

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Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Customer Development There was nothing wrong about Rocket Science having a vision radically different than the conventional wisdom. Customer Development says having a vision, faith and a set of hypotheses are a normal part of the startup experience. The mistake isn’t having a vision and taking risks.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Tips for Startups « Am I a Founder? The other thing it helps clarify is that even at work, it’s the relationships that matter most (collegues, customers, partners, etc). The Adventure of a Lifetime.

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Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

In April 2010 I received an email that said, “I’m an incoming Stanford student in the fall and working on a project that a number of people suggested I get in touch with you about.&#. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. Ok, I get a lot of these. I was feeling pretty old. ——-.

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Marketing , SuperMac , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , SuperMac « Love/Hate Business Plan Competitions Gravity Will be Turned Off » 17 Responses EricS , on May 11, 2009 at 11:05 am Said: I loved my Spigot. Reply Jim Wolcott , on April 28, 2010 at 7:30 pm Said: Steve!

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

steve Joshua , on January 5, 2010 at 3:19 pm Said: Fantastic entry, thanks very much Steve. on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog. As marketers we both understood the 10% was a figure of speech and neither of us took it as a literal number, If I was in engineering I would have been interested in the percentage.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

In 2010 it got worse with an Act in parliament about the Monitoring of Foreigners’ Corporate Acquisitions. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. Instead the business press dumped on the founders for “selling out.”

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (..)

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Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Reply Hans , on June 15, 2010 at 7:10 pm Said: I have never experienced burnout, but I never knew it could influence your physical perception this much I work in the show business (I’m a life sound engineer) and got married 5 years ago. You created it and own it. The Chad poses a very good point.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , ESL , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , ESL « Convergent Technologies: War Story 1 – Selling with Sports Scores A Wilderness of Mirrors » 17 Responses Michael F.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

New strategic direction in companies with loyal customers have different consequences then when you had no customers Acquiring new customers are a lot more expensive that converting existing ones. on July 9, 2010 at 12:50 pm Said: [.] Fire might be a strong word.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Here’s the course announcement from Professor Vergara (in English): Customer Development Course in Chile – Lean Launchpad. The objective of this course is that groups of students finish with a completed software product that has real customers and an identified market.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (..)

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a Customer Development process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model. This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile. You’re not joining a big company.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford.

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Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Startups , Early Stage Startup , Tips for Startups « The Curse of a New Building Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters – Part 1 » 33 Responses William , on May 18, 2009 at 5:44 am Said: Heh.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? Customer Development and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (..)

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. Alex Miroshnichenko , on February 4, 2010 at 6:21 pm Said: Well, funny how myths are created. I was chief engineer and developer of both those radars while I worked for ITT Electro-Physics Lab in Hyattsville, MD.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Reply Karma in the Lean Startup Era , on January 28, 2010 at 5:26 pm Said: [.] Not a trivial job considering our computer was one of the first parallel architectures, and our compiler required specific knowledge of our [.] The cheapest way to get promotion is getting colleagues to [.]

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Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. Reply Alpha Testing « Two Sixes Blog , on July 5, 2010 at 7:04 pm Said: [.]

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. Our friends who run the state park surrounding our ranch will join all of us for Thanksgiving dinner. Just a reflection on my family and hopes for our children.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Getting B-52s through the Soviet Air Defense System Startup Ethics: Albatross or Essential?

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

Reply Augusta Prince , on April 16, 2010 at 3:08 pm Said: My late friend Gordon P. invention of electronic warfare, part I and [.] McCouch wrote in his Harvard ’41 25th anniversary report: “I spent the war as a civilian associated with the radar countermeasures effort at Harvard’s Radio Research Laboratory.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Reply steveblank , on March 28, 2009 at 7:27 am Said: Denis, Over time the blogs tagged under the “customer development&# category will build up a narrative of illustrative stories of how customer development evolved in practice. What part of this blog should I read if I am also reading the book?

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Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Reply dv , on June 11, 2010 at 12:23 am Said: Why are you getting stuck on a word? What is it that’s unique about the market I’m in? We’ll talk about the implications of what vertical market you’re entering in the next few posts. The original terms we used were perfectly fine…why %$#@ with them?

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Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Facts are the rock on which you build your strategy and tactics In a startup second-hand facts are almost as useless as opinions.

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