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

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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Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 241

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

He’s as good as any startup CEO in Silicon Valley. 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. Corporate elephants can dance. So why this post? They will build the sales team that follows.

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Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 239

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.

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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. Order Here.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 230

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. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

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Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 312

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

The mantra of “ first mover advantage ,” the idea that winners are the ones who are the first entrants in their market, became the conventional wisdom of investors in Silicon Valley.“ First Movers” didn’t understand customer problems or the product features that solved those problems (what we now call product-market fit).

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

Two years out of the Air Force, serendipity (which would be my lifelong form of career planning) found me in Silicon Valley working for my first company: ESL. If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. Fred Terman Sent Us In 1953 the U.S.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. 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. Order Here.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

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. Order Here.

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Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 145

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Back in 2004 when Eric and his IMVU co-founder Will Harvey approached me about investing in IMVU, I agreed on one condition – they had to take my Customer Development class at UC Berkeley Haas Business School.

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Lean Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder Channel 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. He runs H4X Labs.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

One part of Silicon Valley culture that doesn’t get enough credit is the generosity of entrepreneurs and VC’s who are willing to share their time with students. 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.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Starting in the 1950’s, Stanford’s engineering department became “outward facing” and developed a culture of spinouts and active faculty support and participation in the first wave of Silicon Valley startups. At the same time Berkeley was also developing Cold War weapons systems. See the presentation here.).

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Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Here at Palo Alto Software in 2007 and 2008, we embraced these planning concepts and moved towards a more agile planning process. This form of planning condensed the business model onto one page and is most useful for high-growth, technically focused startups (think Silicon Valley). What do you need to do to get your doors open?

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Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Everyone should be articulate and agile in describing and demoing the products.) Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. 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.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 139

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ) Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. He runs H4X Labs.

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Oakland Asia Lean Video 315

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Luckily (or maybe because we were in Silicon Valley where there was a domain expert for everything) there was a very smart consultant in the retail computer space, Seymour Merrin, who preached about the importance of packaging. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.)

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Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 255

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. Build Your Own Silicon Valley? Your First Iteration of an Idea Will Be Wrong. What went wrong?

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Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2013

As Eric puts it in the webcast, “I’ve met now the CEOs of some of the biggest companies in the world, and I still spend time with the CEOs of high-growth Silicon Valley companies from the garage on up, and what all those people have in common is that they are seeking out sources of sustainable growth….

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Lean Silicon Valley Agile Cofounder 167

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.

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Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 229

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

customer development. agile engineering. Some general customer development slides click here. Called “ How to Build a Startup: The Lean LaunchPad ,” it walks you through the Business Model Canvas and an overview of the customer development process. Visitors Guide to Silicon Valley.

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Open Source Silicon Valley Lean Customer Development 335

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.” .

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 222

Steve Blank

AUGUST 10, 2009

Funded by military contracts, these 1950′s microwave tube startups would help build Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial culture and environment. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Why Electronics Intelligence? Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!

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Silicon Valley RSS SBIC California 178

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

At Stanford, Ann Miura-Ko and I have been working on a simplified Silicon Valley version of this model. Your job as a founder is to quickly validate whether the model is correct by seeing if customers behave as your model predicts. Most of the time the darn customers don’t behave as you predicted.

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Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

AUGUST 6, 2009

Funded by military contracts these 1950′s startups would help build Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial culture and environment. 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.

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Silicon Valley RSS Germany California 164

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development.

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Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

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: [.] Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. You just get successful. Sometimes they just drop out and do their own thing.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 333

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. ESL, the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley , was founded by a PhD in Math and six other scientists and engineers. Why It’s “Silicon” Valley. It might be its most important.

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Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 313

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked pretty simple. VC’s invested in things that ran on electrons: hardware, software and silicon. Quickly iterate the product in front of customers.

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Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 265

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Silicon Valley, New York). The process they use to guide their search is customer development. They would: Blog their Customer Development progress as a narrative. Victor Hugo.

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Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 292

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Silicon Valley, New York). If you’re in a technology cluster like Silicon Valley you may be able to attract ad hoc advice from experienced investors.

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Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 300

Steve Blank

JUNE 21, 2017

Listen to the entire interview here: Taking the Lean Startup From Silicon Valley to Corporations and the State and Defense Department. 6:22 What’s Customer Development. 7:11 Agile Engineering – Eric Ries. Or just parts of the interview: 1:20 Failure and Lessons Learned. 10:01 Lean in Corporations.

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Silicon Valley Lean Government Boston 260

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2011

Everyone I met in this program “gets” the principles of Agile, Lean and Customer Development big time. Visiting Silicon Valley you can’t mistake that its primary business is innovation. The Center for Entrepreneurship in the Engineering School is akin to Stanford’s STVP program.

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Michigan Silicon Valley Venture Capital Incubator 315

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Silicon Valley, New York). If you’re in a technology cluster like Silicon Valley you may be able to attract ad hoc advice from experienced investors.

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Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 273

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. This approach would shape Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial ethos: In startups, failure was treated as experience (until you ran out of money). Yet this system isn’t perfect. – seems like another planet.

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Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 287