Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

It should go without saying that this post is not advice, nor is it recommendation of what you should do, it’s simply my observation of how companies using Customer Development positioned themselves to successfully raise money from venture investors. They will realize that you have built a startup that’s agile, resilient and customer-centric.

Customer Development 270

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 270

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Refreshing to finally see lean and agile thinking emerge in product/business-floors and not only in technology. Critical also, as the lean company/start-up can not be lean by just using lean principles in IT and not in Product Development/Management - a common misinterpretation of the Toyota Production System.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 5, 2010

When we demand overwhelming customer outcry before committing to the slightest product change, we're in danger of losing the value of creating a cool feature that takes too much effort but people just love. Now sure, there are many of aspects of business and product development where it's best to stop obsessing and just cut corners.

Software Review 226

Software Review Metrics Lean Algorithm 226

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

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. customer relationships to create demand. Lessons Learned.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

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

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. The six key attributes spell ABCDEF: Agility. When talking about their past experience, candidates with agility will know why they did what they did in a given situation.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? By delegating and training, we create a corps of leaders who could step in to provide CTO-like services on demand. Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said. Expo SF (May.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

This theory has become so influential that I have called it one of the three pillars of the lean startup - every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development. You can learn about customer development, and quite a bit more, in Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Expo SF (May.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. What if customers actually like the “crap&# product? Good enough never is (or is it?)

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

What those sites have in common (despite their very different audiences) is that something is causing their customers to become addicted to their product, and so no matter how they acquire a new customer, they tend to keep them. For Neopets, its simply a side-effect of their game-like product design. This has led to exponential growth.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

It’s important to note that system I’m about to explain evolved organically in response to new demands on the system and in response to post-mortems of failures. Nobody gets here overnight, but every step along the way has made us better developers. Heck, thats what it says right there in the agile manifesto.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Wed never heard of five whys, and we had plenty of "agile skeptics" on the team. Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Expo SF (May.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Boyd emphasized the importance of agility in combat: "the key to victory is to be able to create situations wherein one can make appropriate decisions more quickly than ones opponent." Agile software development. Agile allows companies to build higher quality software faster. Hopefully others will find it useful as well.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content. While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

In other words, a principled way to combine agility with stability. If we’re practicing continuous deployment, we can be confident that we’ll be able to rush an emergency fix into production without risking introducing further problems. In other words, a principled way to combine agility with stability.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

The Startup Magazine

JULY 1, 2019

Scrum is a framework that is used by software development teams to address complex problems while delivering products of the highest value. Scrum is the most popular subset of the Agile methodology and is used by seventy percent of software teams around the world for project management. Is This You?

SCRUM 76

SCRUM Agile Software Development Software Developers 76

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 11, 2012

Better Agile Than Smart – [link]. Six Myths of Product Development – [link]. Are You Willing To Pay For The Change You’re Demanding? Better Agile Than Smart – [link]. Six Myths of Product Development – [link]. How to Increase Trust for a Landing Page Design – [link].

Social Media 92

Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 4, 2024

Investment in Growth: Allocate funds strategically to areas that promote growth, such as marketing, product development, and talent acquisition. Agility: Foster a culture of agility where your team is encouraged to adapt quickly to changes. Positive cash flow is essential for business expansion.

Technical Review 117

Technical Review Agile Audience Employee 117

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit. Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campa. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Anyone who has worked in a real-world product development team can tell you how utopian that sounds. As a result, we tried many different stratagems to avoid giving the impression that we were a fully-featured IM system, going so far as to build our initial product as an add-on to existing IM programs.

Advisory Board 151

Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 15comments: Anonymoussaid. oh, and on the book front, you'll be able to get all of my essays so far in ebook, print-on-demand, and kindle editions - coming soon. Leave your thoughts in a comment. I’ll do my best to help.) Great article as always, Eric.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

As a consumer internet company with millions of customers, it may seem to have little relevancy for an enterprise software company with only a handful of potential customers, or a computer security company whose customers demand a rigorous audit before accepting a new release. Expo SF (May. Conference streaming, sponsors, discounted tickets.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 10, 2023

That way you can focus on what's important and not worry about whether or not your marketing strategy or product development process makes sense. 14- No, as I relied on customer feedback Photo Credit: Michael Mastin I relied on agility and adaptability. Thanks to Jason Williams, Automate Your Life ! #7-

Business Plan 132

Business Plan Jordan Entrepreneur Florida 132

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

As the company grows, hes the go-to person for almost everything technical, and so hes very much in demand. Sometimes, a great hacker has the potential to grow into the CTO of a company, and in those cases all you need is an outside mentor who can work with them to develop those skills. He throws off volumes of code, and it works.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Part-Time VPE 94

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

The other revels in the world as we all know it will be someday: limitless distribution enabled by new technologies, the importance of collaborative filters, and on-demand availability of all content for end-users. When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. Is that a lot?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? What the winners start with is the realization that in a world of continuous disruption, they have only a few years to develop new capabilities or be pushed over the brink. Is it that some CEOs are better than others? Are their people smarter?

Incubator 419

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 419

Venture Chronicles

AUGUST 2, 2013

Compounding the problem is that we became victim of agile engineering in a poorly structured development organization where there were no clear teams focused on building to the user archetypes and investing in the platform. engineers paired would jump from frontend to backend erratically at each sprint iteration.

Product 62

Product CTO Hire Architecture Startup 62

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 26, 2022

With more of us working from home and placing more demands on our bandwidths, faster internet with increased capacity for file sharing and uninterrupted Zoom conversations is the natural next step. Think of the agility that comes with CAI, etc. Companies will also be able to simplify product. Keep an eye on this.

Software Review 123

Software Review Technical Review Entrepreneur Artificial Inteligence 123

Transformify

JANUARY 2, 2021

It demands a level of employee management and project management skills beyond regular. 1- Scrum: Scrum is an agile project management methodology with a focus on delivering products as fast as possible. Doing projects as a team demands a high level of communication and collaboration between team members. 3- Scrumban.

SCRUM 75

SCRUM Management Development Team Review Agile 75

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. Somewhere in the dim past of the company, it too was a startup searching for a business model.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. Expo SF (May. Conference streaming, sponsors, discounted tickets.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

Periodic or on-demand reports are one possibility, but we can do much better. I got a powerful taste of datablindness recently, as I’ve started to work with various large companies as partners in setting up events, speeches, and other products to sell around the Lean Startup concept. We can learn to see. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Occam's Razor

NOVEMBER 11, 2013

My career spans customer service, engineering, finance, product development, marketing, sales, and corporate functions. The web demands immense agility and flexibility within every company. The web has broken down traditional job silos in companies.

Saudi Arabia 167

Saudi Arabia Green Leadership Web 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

I believe its important that product teams be cross-functional, no matter what other job function the product champion does. . Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campa. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

Key attributes of an entrepreneur on a founding team are passion, determination, resilience, tenacity, agility and curiosity. They deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers. If any of the answers are “Yes,” then hire them a bit later as an early employee. And what is critical is trust.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

In other words, the minimum viable product is designed to answer the question: does the product generate enough demand and margin to support a growing ecosystem? In other words, the minimum viable product is designed to answer the question: does the product generate enough demand and margin to support a growing ecosystem?

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

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