Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

After these slides, these VC’s recognized that this company had dramatically reduced risk and built a startup that was agile, resilient and customer-centric. The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Your “Customer Development Process&# has really resonated for me.

Venture Capital 245

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 245

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Agile – you may find the real opportunities for your company was somewhere else. 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.

Cofounder 230

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 230

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

The Curse of a New Building At some point in my career as I began to ponder how/why startups morph from agile, “can do&# companies to [.] [.] I think there’s a size and scale where regardless of your intentions lean and agile won’t work (looking like a grandmother in a miniskirt.) A VERY nice office.

Silicon Valley 233

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 233

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. The first reaction from my CEO was, “that’s why you’re running the department.” And yes, we could have built a top-down, command-and-control hierarchy. on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

We agreed that all her founding CEOs seemed to have the same set of personality traits – tenacious, passionate, relentless, resilient, agile, and comfortable operating in chaos. I coach agile teams for a living, and I do most of my work with start-ups. I said, “well for me you’d have to add coming from a dysfunctional family.”

Founder 312

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 312

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10 weeks. While all the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ), Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, each of their journeys was unique.

Lean 417

Lean Security Asia SBIR 417

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

I know that this all seems obvious now with the movements started by Steven Blank ( Four Steps of Epiphany ) with the whole Customer Development processes / Lean Startup movements also popularized by people like Eric Ries. I see many CEO’s, product managers and marketing types out in the field talking with customers and users.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

A partner allows me the flexibility to miss a session or two (my job as a California Coastal Commissioner meets three days every month up and down the coast of California.) For example, when we taught the value of getting out of the building and agile development, we had Eric Ries talk about the Lean Startup.

Business Model 236

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 236

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.

Technology 145

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 145

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

And in hindsight, we seemed a bit more agile and innovative in WWII.) Yet decades later the military lacked the agility to write a spec in two years, let alone get 10′s of thousands of new systems deployed on aircraft as Terman had done. My first business trip to the valley was to visit California Microwave.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 210

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. When Terman said no, Sylvania, a tube company which built proximity fuse tubes in WWII, won the contract and set up its Electronic Defense Lab (EDL) in Mountain View California in the middle of an orchard.

Silicon Valley 201

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 201

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

Customer Development 255

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 255

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

When I retired after 21 years working in 8 startups, I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the business school at the University of California Berkeley. The Lean LaunchPad class is now taught around the world – and VC’s expect entrepreneurs to talk about not just their technology but their customer development findings.

Lean 224

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 224

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

Andrew read the Four Steps to the Epiphany , tracked me down at California Coastal Commission hearing in Santa Barbara, and had me meeting with him in a stairwell during a break in my day-long meeting. Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. So how did Customer Development fail us?

Customer Development 231

Customer Development Developer Customer California 231

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Everyone should be articulate and agile in describing and demoing the products.) For bigger booths a good rule of thumb is to have two to four staffers for every 100 square feet of exhibit space. Even for the smallest trade show, no one shows up without booth training. Messages, themes, demo’s. What didn’t?

Silicon Valley 139

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 139

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Finally, I’ll write about how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

Customer Development 229

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 229

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) But the rest; sales, marketing, bus dev is actually customer development that the founder needs to understand. Initially your job is to understand each of the parts of your business model before you hire someone to do it.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. While that’s not true, it is a fact that entrepreneurs only have one word for “startup.” .

Customer Development 222

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 222

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

The Ultimate Combination of Startup Business Development Methods - ArcticStartup , November 16, 2010 I've been a huge fan of Steven Blank's Customer Development methodology for a long time. Meet the New Enterprise Customer, He’s a Lot Like the Old Enterprise Customer - Ben's Blog , November 15, 2010 Meet the new boss.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

You don’t get grades for having resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition and tenacity. From the king of customer development, Steve Blank: [.] There’s a big difference between being an employee at a great technology company and having the guts to start one. You just get successful.

Silicon Valley 333

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 333

Steve Blank

MARCH 7, 2012

The class is intensely and deliberately experiential to develop the mindset, reflexes, agility and resilience an entrepreneur needs to search for certainty in a chaotic world. The premise of the class is that startups, are not about executing a plan where the product, customers, channel are known. Only in California!

Lean 263

Lean Business Model Agile United States 263

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

And how thinking of a solution to this commonly used model’s failures led to a new model – the Customer Development Model – that offers a new way to approach startup activities outside the building. Product Development Diagram 1. —– Part 2 of the Customer Development Manifesto to follow.

Customer Development 245

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 245

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

The Lean LaunchPad class teaches students how to build a Lean Startup using business model design, customer development and agile engineering. Teams have to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week.) However, going through the customer development process showed me the danger in that kind of thinking.

Lean 277

Lean New York City New York Customer Development 277

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I started my last company with 100% off-shore resources because I could never have completed Customer Development at a reasonable cost of money or regulatory burden had I employed US Citizens. Truth be told, we've got defense contractors here just like California does too. September 9, 2009 12:36 AM Richard Tibbetts said.

DC 90

DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

It ended with a large layoff and a transfer of jobs from NY to California and Bangalore. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? In the end, the team that he put together was severely dysfunctional and worked much worse than the one he inherited. The moral of the story?

San Francisco 83

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

The original Hewlett Packard which made test and measurement products was spun-out and renamed Agilent. Agilent is a $5.8 Technology changes, culture changes, customer needs change, more agile competitors emerge, etc. The remaining company kept the Hewlett Packard name and focussed on computers.

Silicon Valley 192

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 192

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2009

Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley « Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA Rocket Science 2: Drinking the Kool-Aid » 2 Responses Ben , on July 1, 2009 at 2:31 pm Said: Great post Steve. I can’t get this one out of my head. during World War II.

Silicon Valley 145

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 145

Steve Blank

AUGUST 6, 2009

Air Force also needed improvements in frequency agility to protect its cold war bombers. Frequency agility can be best described by what happened over Germany in WWII. B-47 - primary Strategic Air Command Bomber in the 1950's As a result, to protect its bombers flying over the Soviet Union the U.S.

Silicon Valley 164

Silicon Valley RSS Germany California 164

Steve Blank

MAY 13, 2009

Reply Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA « Steve Blank , on June 29, 2009 at 7:02 am Said: [.] Reply Gravity Will Be Turned Off « Avid Editor’s Insights , on May 17, 2009 at 1:31 am Said: [.] entire story can be found at Steve Blank. It’s worth a few minutes time off from reaming [.]

Silicon Valley 240

Silicon Valley RSS California Mississippi 240

Steve Blank

AUGUST 10, 2009

Rapid Scan/High Probability of Intercept – Stanford’s contribution In the last post we described Stanford’s high power, electronically tuned microwave tubes (the Backward Wave Oscillator ) which made high power, frequency agile airborne jammers possible.

Silicon Valley 178

Silicon Valley RSS SBIC California 178

Steve Blank

MARCH 28, 2009

Sure the rest of the stories diverge though… can’t really imagine a Soviet counterpart to the Customer Development method. Reply Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA « Steve Blank , on June 29, 2009 at 7:02 am Said: [.] Reply Ben C. , The invention of electronic warfare, part I and II. [.]

Silicon Valley 231

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Michigan 231

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 126

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 126

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2017

Each of their slide presentation follow their customer discovery journey. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. Filed under: Customer Development , Hacking For Defense , Lean LaunchPad.

Silicon Valley 202

Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 202

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

In an early stage startup, instead of sales being up front, the point departments are likely to be product development and customer development. Later on in this same company’s life, sales will become the pointy end and product development moves to a supporting role. No one was confused after that.

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 133

usersknow.blogspot.com

APRIL 30, 2010

An Agile Alternative: Embedded Design A Depressing Example of Non-Agile Design Why Your Customer Feedback is Useless Seven More Ways People Suck at Customer Developmen. ► February (1) 6 Ways You May Be Failing at Customer Development ► 2009 (9) ► December (1) Which Metrics Equal Happy Users?

Software Review 40

Software Review Agile San Francisco Metrics 40

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

I teach teams various Agile techniques, and occasionally get told some particular trick is cheating. E.g., we take a big spec, cut the 80% that, for some core group of customers, is nice rather than necessary, and ship the 20% ASAP. Just remember ethics and values are about what you practice when the going gets tough.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS Startup California 128

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2018

Each of their slide presentations follow their customer discovery journey. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. The teams presented in front of several hundred people in person and online.

Southern California 191

Southern California San Diego Mississippi SBIR 191