Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

My contract developers building the app aren’t very responsive. He was using 3 rd parties to build his app but he had no expertise on how to manage external developers. The emphasis on the rapid development and iteration of MVP’s is to speed up how fast you can learn ; from customers, partners, network scale, adoption, etc.

Cofounder 336

Cofounder Founder Technical Cofounder Coder 336

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

For decades this revered business magazine described management techniques that were developed in and were for large corporations – offering more efficient and creative ways to execute existing business models. Each of these authors ( along with others too numerous to mention) profoundly changed my view of management and strategy.

Technical Review 331

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 331

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 30, 2012

The class teaches founders how to dramatically reduce their failure rate through the combination of business model design, customer development and agile development using the Startup Owners Manual. And you’ll learn about how to build a minimal viable product to get feedback early and often from customers.

Startup 335

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

And over time every venture capitalist develops their own gut feel for what makes up a great team in their industry. For example, if you’re building a mobile app, then the key activities are: app software development, user interface design and demand creation skills. Filed under: Customer Development.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

We think teaching teams a formal methodology around the Lean Framework (Business Model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) is a natural evolution of how successful incubators/accelerators will build startups. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching.

Lean 322

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 322

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.

Agile 334

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 334

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

student of our MS&E department at Stanford ,) where they are set on being a leader in developing the management science of entrepreneurship. This startup search process is the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. The 47th (-46) Annual Business Model Competition.

Business Model 285

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 285

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.

Chile 241

Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 241

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

The benefits of customer and agile development and minimum features set are continuous customer feedback, rapid iteration and little wasted code. But over time if developers aren’t careful, code written to find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling.

Part-Time VPE 325

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 325

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. Another piece of trivial: the road that is the side-entrance (during business hours) to Agilent Corporation HQ in Santa Clara is named “Terman Lane&# after Terman. I’ll stop channeling James Burke now.

Silicon Valley 302

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 302

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. That’s why startups are agile. Startups that are agile have mastered one other trick – and that’s Tempo – the ability to make quick decisions consistently over extended periods of time.

Silicon Valley 309

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 309

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. This methodology forces rapid hypothesis testing and Customer Development by getting out of the building while building the product. And since the rest of the slides were about Customer Development, I taught those.

Incubator 310

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 310

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. Even if they did, what if the assumption – that we had developed a better approach to teaching entrepreneurship – was simply mistaken?

Lean 307

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 307

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2010

If you’ve been reading my book on Customer Development and follow my work on Market Type , this type of innovation is best for adding new products to existing markets. In fact the people a large firm needs for this kind of innovation looks suspiciously like startup founders and the processes needed look like Customer Development.

Search 251

Search Agile Customer Development Technical Review 251

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

For decades this revered business magazine described management techniques that were developed in and were for large corporations – offering more efficient and creative ways to execute existing business models. Each of these authors ( along with others too numerous to mention) profoundly changed my view of management and strategy.

Technical Review 223

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 223

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

Business models allow agile and opportunistic founders to keep score of the Pivots in their search for a repeatable business model. Filed under: Customer Development Manifesto , Durant versus Sloan: Startups Verus Companies , Teaching. Instead of business plans I have suggested that startups use business models.

Business Plan 320

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 320

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.

Lean 263

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 263

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

They needed to be sure that what they were building was what customers wanted and needed. And if their initial guesses were wrong, they needed a process that would permit them to change early on in the product development process when the cost of changes was small – the famed “pivot”. The result? Carpe Diem – Seize the Cash.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. “Customer Development” to test the hypotheses outside the building and. Teams talk to 10-15 customers a week and make a minimum of 100 customer visits.

Intellectual Property 290

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 290

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. They’ve tested their hypotheses with literally hundreds of customer interviews on every continent in the world. Corporate elephants can dance.

Silicon Valley 239

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 239

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

HR processes, legal processes, financial processes, acquisition and contracting processes, security processes, product development and management processes, and types of organizational forms etc. By process I mean all the tools that allow companies and government to scale repeatable execution. Process Versus Product.

Government 322

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 322

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

A Proof of Concept center, which is not the same as a full-fledged incubator, would also be responsible to develop a companywide core competence in business model and open innovation design and a VC-like, staged-risk funding decision criteria for new market opportunities. Developing a program to generate new ideas is the easy part.

Programming 273

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 273

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 29, 2018

If you want to take your business to the next level, you should consider app development. Either way, custom software development is an effective way to build brand awareness and give your business a competitive edge. While app development can be very beneficial, that’s only true if it’s done the right way.

Developer 102

Developer Offshore Software Developers Software Development 102

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2012

When Bob Dorf and I wrote the Startup Owners Manual we listed a series of Customer Development principles. Pair Customer Development with Agile Development. So by popular demand, here’s a poster of the Customer Development Manifesto. for A Repeatable and Scalable Business Model.

Customer Development 331

Customer Development Developer Customer Cofounder 331

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

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 16, 2013

One good example is the way in which we''ve adjusted the length of different phases of our agile sprints. We don''t follow a set agile methodology, but rather follow a more home-grown, minimal version of various approaches. During this period, the Palantir Gotham team grew from five developers to around 35. So what was going on?

Lean 167

Lean Startup Software Engineering Agile 167

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 used to always tell my development team, “you need to design a product that my dad could use.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

In previous posts I’ve talked about what the combination of Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Methodologies mean to startups and intrapreneurs in large companies; it’s the beginning of entrepreneurship as a science with its own rules and methodologies. Teaching In the Big Apple.

Customer Development 278

Customer Development Business Model Developer Design 278

VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

Ditch the business plan and when assumptions are proven wrong, pivot Customer Development: Build a product your customers want (vs. what you think they might need) by talking to customers and testing every aspect of the product features, pricing, etc. Agile Development: launch an MVP early and iterate quickly.

Lean 214

Lean Seed Capital Startup Burn Rate 214

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Repeat, learning whether to iterate, pivot or restart until you have something that customers love. Waterfall Development. While it sounds simple , the Build Measure Learn approach to product development is a radical improvement over the traditional Waterfall model used throughout the 20 th century to build and ship products.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

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. Stay tuned.

Lean 417

Lean Security Asia SBIR 417

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. Next, you have to deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers. And that’s just to get started. I like my odds.

Founder 312

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 312

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

> Uber's " Reality Therapy 4 Startups": What U Need 2 Know NOW > Steve Blank on why NOT to be an Entrepreneur > Airbnb's Globetrotting Lessons: Building 4 a Global Market > Vinod Khosla - The VC Legend: Interview w/ Dave McClure > Eric Ries on Entrepreneurship: What He's Learned Along the Way > GitHub's Secret 2 Success: Rethinking (..)

Lean 165

Lean Cofounder Startup Software Engineering 165

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. Reply steveblank , on October 10, 2009 at 10:59 am Said: Sales material developed by marketers who have never left the building is more often that not completely useless.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2010

I’ve been teaching Customer Development at U.C. Berkeley was brave enough to let me write and teach a class on a subject that no one had ever heard of – Customer Development. Customer Development was a process to quickly search for a profitable business model when customer needs (features, pricing, channel, etc.)

Customer Development 245

Customer Development Lean Developer Customer 245

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