Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Building an Advisory Board In my travels outside the building I kept my eyes out for articulate and visionary scientists and engineers who had expertise we lacked, and were willing to help in an advisory capacity. I set up an advisory board as a vehicle to get these industry experts engaged with the company and product.

Engineer 224

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 224

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

Thus I was happy to see a recent book, “ The Tech Entrepreneur’s Survival Guide ,” by Bernd Schoner, PhD, and cofounder of ThingMagic, which leans heavily on the people side of the equation. You need to have a technical genius on the team to get your startup product off the ground. Outsourcing your core competency does not work.

Technical Cofounder 120

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Advisory Board Stock Options 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

Srivastava leads Verizon’s innovation outpost (their Silicon Valley R&D center) in Palo Alto focusing on building products and services powered by big data and analytics. Evangelos Simoudis’ is the founder and managing director of Synapse Partners. I presented them to our chief product officer and our CTO.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms. So much for timing. Would love to get in touch.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

OnlyOnce

JULY 9, 2013

The book has been described by a few CEOs who read it and commented early for me along the lines of “The Lean Startup movement is great, but this book starts where most of those books end and takes you through the ‘so you have a product that works in-market – now what?’ questions”. What About Sales & Marketing?, Or a Sprint?

Startup 95

Startup Advisory Board Elevator Pitch Forecast 95

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

I hope to show why lean and agile techniques actually reduce the negative impacts of technical debt and increase our ability to take advantage of its positive effects. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” I gave my boilerplate answer, “I’m a product guy and I tend to invest and look at deals that have measurable revenue metrics. However the Customer Development Model and the Lean Startup work equally well for startups on the web.

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 228

Up and Running

JUNE 16, 2014

For venture capitalist, Paul Suster , it’s not just the individual; the ‘management team’ is essential. I’m personally 70% management, 30% product […] If I feel a priori that the CEO can’t cut it I’m highly unlikely to invest. Because management is so important, I always tell people to make the bio slide the first in your deck.

Exit Strategy 91

Exit Strategy Advisory Board Business Plan Portfolio 91

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

In the very early days, the trick is to find anyone at all who can understand you when you are talking about your product. In our first year at IMVU, we thought we were building a 3D avatar chat product. As product people, we thought of competition in terms of features. Establish a customer advisory board.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

A Phone Call After I left MIPS Computers I was in New York tagging along with a friend (a computer architect whose products at Apple a decade later would change the shape of personal computing) who was consulting for a voice recognition startup. Reply Karma in the Lean Startup Era , on January 28, 2010 at 5:26 pm Said: [.]

North Carolina 133

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 133

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

It typically takes multiple iterations and pivots to find product/market fit – the match between what you’re building and who will buy it. Now the organization needs to put in place culture, training, product management, processes and procedures, (i.e. Now Patrick would have to pivot himself and the company.

Startup 120

Startup Lean Venture Capital Advisory Board 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 19, 2009 Inc Magazine on Minimum Viable Product (and a response) Inc Magazine has a great new piece up about the increasing use of the Minimum Viable Product by businesses (and not just startups). Like many companies, TPGTEX rolls out new products several times a year.

San Francisco 137

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 137

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2009

In addition to some of my recent talks, you can learn more about the Startup Visa movement and enjoy two really interesting lean startup case studies. pbWorks (formerly pbWiki) was one of the first companies that ever invited me to join their advisory board. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May.

Audio 118

Audio San Francisco Video Continuous Deployment 118

Austin Startup

DECEMBER 29, 2018

For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. To retain stars you have to teach them how to manage up, not just down or across.

Cofounder 48

Cofounder Austin Technical Review Advisory Board 48

OnlyOnce

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

They stress out about big expensive new executive hires when sometimes they just need to level-up an existing manager or “try before they buy.” Their Boards frequently jump in to help, but those efforts can be a little ad hoc and inefficient. to leaning in to our board (hit or miss, inefficient). Bolster your work.

Advisory Board 71

Advisory Board Leadership Portfolio Matching 71

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

Lean Startups ? Investors who have successful ex-founders who you can call for advice, grab a coffee with or get on your advisory board is a good sign. Most early stage VC’s are betting on the founders to both deliver the product and to find the business model. Have they heard about Customer Development ?

Founder 232

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 232

OnlyOnce

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

They stress out about big expensive new executive hires when sometimes they just need to level-up an existing manager or “try before they buy.” Their Boards frequently jump in to help, but those efforts can be a little ad hoc and inefficient. to leaning in to our board (hit or miss, inefficient). Bolster your work.

Advisory Board 62

Advisory Board Leadership Portfolio Matching 62

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 22, 2009 Pivot, dont jump to a new vision In a lean startup , instead of being organized around traditional functional departments, we use a cross-functional problem team and solution team. Thats not the goal of a lean startup. One such practice is to pivot from one vision to the next.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

Its latest product was an oscilloscope, the HP 150a. Army Signal Corps advisory board, and the Army was going to acquire their first computer for research. That year HP introduced its first computer, the HP 2116A , as an instrument controller for HP’s test and measurement products. Agilent is a $5.8

Silicon Valley 193

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 193

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2021

We just finished the 11th annual Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford — our first version focused on deep science and technology. I’ve always thought of the class as a minimal viable product – testing new ideas and changing the class as we learn. Started on Week 1 as a platform for finding and managing at-home senior care.

Lean 336

Lean Technology Artificial Inteligence Intellectual Property 336

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Managing these situations is hard for any company, but potentially lethal for a startup. I’ve lived through the over-architecture failure – where attempting to prevent all kinds of problems wound up delaying the company from putting out any product at all. There are just so many ways for a startup to fail.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 11, 2009 Innovation inside the box I was recently privy to a product prioritization meeting in a relatively large company. The team spent an hour trying to decide on a new pricing strategy for their main product line. It was fascinating. The whole process had taken. What a waste.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

It’s all about the product. The only thing that matters is how good your product is. At Fab, our virtual product is our website & apps, our physical products are the merchandise we sell, and our experience product is our operations and service. Getting all 3 parts of our product right is everything.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

usersknow.blogspot.com

APRIL 30, 2010

Is this feature usable, and is the UX reasonably consistent with the rest of my product? I have contacted my customer service/community management team and prepped them with information about the new feature and asked them to get back to me if we start to see any significant new support requests. My God, How Long Will This Take?

Software Review 40

Software Review Agile San Francisco Metrics 40

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, October 23, 2009 Case Study: Using an LOI to get customer feedback on a minimum viable product How much work should you do on a new product before involving customers? But other times, the right way to learn is actually to show a product prototype to customers one-on-one.

San Francisco 144

San Francisco Customer Wiki Lean 144

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

Most products that fail do so because users don’t understand how to get value from them. Many product fail by being too complex. The CEO of a startup must, must, must be the product manager. Use a bug tracking system and religiously manage development action items from it. . User experience matters a lot.

Post-Money Valuation 92

Post-Money Valuation Valuation Dilution Advisory Board 92

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

blog comments powered by Disqus Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe via email Blog Archive ► 2010 (48) ► October (3) Case Study: Rapid iteration with hardware The Lean Startup Bundle Stop lying on stage ► September (4) Good enough never is (or is it?) The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 111

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 111

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Lean Methodology Sources. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Part 3- Lean Cust. Task Management. Project Management Tools. Subscription Payments / Management. Managing APIs. Customer Relationship Management. Contractor Management. Scanning / Document Management. SW Courses.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53