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 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

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 30, 2013

At dinner last week, my long time friend Dave Jilk (we just celebrated our 30th friendship anniversary) tossed a hypothesis at me that as people age, they resist adopting new technologies. People working in information technology tend to take a producer perspective. The essay follows. I think he totally nails it. What do you think?

Technology 168

Technology Coder Social Media Semantic 168

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. The most visible step was the first International Business Model Competition , hosted by the BYU Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. What’s A Startup?

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Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 285

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

I’ve spent the last week in Santiago, a guest of Professor Cristóbal García at the Catholic University of Chile as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program. Here’s the course announcement from Professor Vergara (in English): Customer Development Course in Chile – Lean Launchpad. Teaching in Chile.

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Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 241

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2010

Over time, innovations outside the company (demographic, cultural, new technologies, etc.) The company loses customers, then revenues and profits decline and it eventually gets acquired or goes out of business. valued by their existing customers – fairly well. outpace an existing company’s business model.

Search 251

Search Agile Customer Development Technical Review 251

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

corporation – starting a new technology division bringing disruptive technology to market at General Electric. One of GE’s new divisions – GE’s Energy Storage – has been given the charter to bring an entirely new battery technology to market. He’s as good as any startup CEO in Silicon Valley. So why this post?

Silicon Valley 239

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 239

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 145

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 145

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks , turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. 19 of the 21 teams are moving forward in commercializing their technology. We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack.

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Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 310

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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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 263

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

To fill this gap I wrote The Four Steps to the Epiphany , a book about the Customer Development process and how it changes the way startups are built. In the last decade it’s become clear that companies are facing continuous disruption from globalization, technology shifts, rapidly changing consumer tastes, etc.

Technical Review 223

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 223

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. The first class was an introduction to the concepts of business model design and customer development. This post is part one.

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Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 307

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

But as Carlota Perez has so aptly described, all new technology industries go through an eruption and frenzy phase, followed by a crash, then a golden age and maturity. Then the cycle repeats with a new set of technologies. Some have labeled this period as irrational exuberance.

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Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. Storm Clouds - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 12, 2010 We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years. This should not deter you. What went wrong?

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Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Disruption today is more than just changes in technology, or channel, or competitors – it’s all of them, all at once. These processes reduce risk to an overall organization, but each layer of process reduces the ability to be agile and lean and – most importantly – responsive to new opportunities and threats.

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Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 322

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

JANUARY 30, 2013

The program became large enough that it came time to choose between expanding the program or making it more technology focused and closely tied to corporate R&D. I earnestly believe that large corporations should emulate Lean Startups (Business model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering.)

Programming 273

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 273

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 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 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.

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Lean Security Asia SBIR 417

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. We''ve had to design and implement training programs to help on-board people to our culture and technology.

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Lean Startup Software Engineering Agile 167

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

They were trying to keep up with providing the core services necessary to run the current business and at the same time deal with a flood of well-meaning but uncoordinated ideas about new features, technologies and innovations coming at them from all directions. Ironically, by standing still, they were falling behind.

Incubator 319

Incubator Curation Engineer Government 319

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

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. At some point in my career as I began to formulate thoughts about mission and intent, I started to think about the broader role of marketing in a growing technology company. 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.”

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Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 312

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering. My office is in the Terman Engineering Building.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 210

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. She posted her notes from the talk here.)

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Customer Development Business Model Developer Design 278

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Such direct experiences allows one to test critical “leap-of-faith” assumptions about what customers like and dislike. Customer development (the understanding of customer needs) must be married to agile development (a process which drives waste out of product development).

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. At ESL Military Intelligence Was No Longer an Oxymoron Perry not only took his best managers, but he also took his customers, and his desire to build a company culture that was the antithesis of working for a phone company.

Silicon Valley 201

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 201

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 22, 2020

This change has presented a challenge for the news and media companies to adopt digital technologies for their business operations. However, these technological developments have also presented a special opportunity for companies to understand what their customers need and how they interact with their businesses.

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API Media Agile Technical Review 148

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

In my last post I described my approach to one of the three classes I teach at Stanford in the engineering school: Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship. 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

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

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

Gordon had the uncanny ability to see the future trajectory of computer and chip technology way before I even understood the problem. 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.

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Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 224

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 29, 2018

In order to bring the most value to your business, it’s important you explore ways to enhance your customer experience. While app development can be very beneficial, that’s only true if it’s done the right way. As the technology industry continues to grow, the tech talent pool has expanded exponentially. Source: Pexels.

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Developer Offshore Software Developers Software Development 105

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

The disadvantage is that its methodology was based on the old waterfall model of product development and not the agile and lean methods that startups use today. It taught lean theory ( business model design , customer development and agile engineering) and practice. Seeing Is Believing. Berkeley-wide.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

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.

Oakland 315

Oakland Asia Lean Video 315

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