Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious. Good stuff too.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Venture Capital | Tagged: Entrepreneurs « Customer Development Manifesto: Market Type (part 4) Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) » 16 Responses Jon Ziskind , on September 14, 2009 at 9:19 am Said: Steve – Great post and really great advice.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

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. This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile. You’re not joining a big company.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

No internet, no blogs, no books on startups, no entrepreneurship departments in universities, etc. Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

I feel that I’ve derived as much value from this post as I would from reading 2 or 3 lengthy books on the topic. on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog. steve Joshua , on January 5, 2010 at 3:19 pm Said: Fantastic entry, thanks very much Steve. Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. Now In Print!

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Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Lessons Learned No one will tell you to work fewer hours You need to be responsible for your own health and happiness Burnout sneaks up on you Burnout is self-induced. You created it and own it.

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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.

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Marketing , SuperMac , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , SuperMac « Love/Hate Business Plan Competitions Gravity Will be Turned Off » 17 Responses EricS , on May 11, 2009 at 11:05 am Said: I loved my Spigot. It was fun watching it happen.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (..)

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. Our friends who run the state park surrounding our ranch will join all of us for Thanksgiving dinner. Just a reflection on my family and hopes for our children.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (..)

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Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

thanks Reply Denis , on March 27, 2009 at 7:05 pm Said: Steve, is this blog in addition to the book or instead of it? What part of this blog should I read if I am also reading the book? mahmoud , on March 28, 2009 at 1:53 am Said: Steve, I want to buy your book but its not available on amazon.ca

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Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

It is pity that I can’t get hold of your book because it’s not available in a local bookstore (in the Philippines). Reply steveblank , on March 23, 2009 at 12:11 am Said: Alvin, you can buy the book online at [link] They ship to the Philippines. i have your book, but stopped at the 4th chapter.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

The Times Square Strategy discussion I had with Eric Ries , was still top of mind, so instead of my standard Customer Development lecture , I offered my thoughts on: the origin of Customer Development, where we are today, and where does Customer Development go, and how you can help get it there.

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Unfortunately most startups learn this by going through the “Fire the first Sales VP&# drill: You start your company with a list of potential customers reading like a “who’s who&# of whatever vertical market you’re in (or the Fortune 1000 list.) Your board nods sagely at your target customer list.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. 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’re an entrepreneur, ESL is the most important company you’ve never heard of.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

This lack of information meant that every World War II movie or book that had airplanes on bombing missions in it was wrong. I just put Guerlac’s and Eckert/Schubert’s books in my “to read&# pile. Every one of them. (To To someone who had grown up with reruns of WWII war movies on TV, this was a shock.)

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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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Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

I’ve built my company using the Customer Development Model from Day One. I recently completed the Validation step (less the industry analyst presentations) and am ready to move on to Customer Creation. Reading a few of the basic books on selling and influence (just google for a list) 2. Asking is NOT easy, IMHO.

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deal architect

JUNE 5, 2023

I shared in this post that our research agenda is tracking four large software and services markets – vertical “edge” applications, applications for fast-growing global economies, custom development using low and no-code tools and Generative and other AI. The interest.

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Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

It’s a challenge to keep the play-book up-to-date as we are doing it. It made sense, but there does have to be a central road map the allows for evolution. I need to keep focused on driving the ball down the field. With all that said – startup is the best job in the world!! Thanks again.

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Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes. era&# , but really interested in your take on these “free&# models through the prism of Customer Development.

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Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2009

The Customer Development talk can be seen here. That said I will be giving a Customer Development talk at TIECON , Saturday May 16th, 1:30 thanks for asking. steve Customer Development is Hard. Thanks to Dave McClure and Leonard Speiser for the opportunity to speak. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The slides are here.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

I place them roughly in this order: Movies > Television > Books > Music > Magazines > Radio > Newspapers Each industry is watching the one in front of it sink into the quicksand. When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. My blog has over 14000 subscribers, for example.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that.

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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. Ultimately you want to see if you can find customers and a market for the product as specified – as early as possible.

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David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Similarly, customer introductions are invaluable in the early days, but become less valuable once a company has a fully-formed go to market function.”. A well-organized library of best practices for founders in your vertical, which you can share as appropriate. Organize events in your vertical. Customer Development.

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ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

Back in 2016, I read a book called Sprint by Jake Knapp, founder of Google Ventures. As advocated in the book, I felt the idea of using restraint would help me quickly execute on new ideas. Choose to expand vertically or horizontally. And so, the concept for a digital PR service was born. There’s plenty of pie to go around.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

Customer Development This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the Customer Development process. Employ customer development. Because at times facts may create cognitive dissonance with the beliefs that got you started and funded.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

From the king of customer development, Steve Blank: [.] You don’t get grades for having resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition and tenacity. You just get successful. Sometimes they just drop out and do their own thing. No one has to tell them to do that.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

And you’d like me to do my talk on Customer Development and startups?” “No, we’re the other CIA.” On first glance it appears as if they are spending to much energy in the vertical portion of the jump, relative to the horizontal portion. Do you mean the Culinary Institute of America?

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the Customer Development model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” It’s an impressive portfolio.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2009

As a contractor handling the “customer’s&# information, ESL went by the book with librarians inside the vaults and had strict document access and control procedures. In contrast, this site belonged to the “customer.&# They set their own rules about how documents were handled, and the safes were open to everyone.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. Do you know the archetype of their customers? Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 21, 2010

Filed under: Customer Development « Requiem For A Roommate 2 Responses steve , on October 21, 2010 at 7:05 am Said: what did Carl say at 1:12 ? BTW, the definition of entrepreneurship I describe at 2:50 into the video is described in detail in the post “ You’re Not a Real Entrepreneur.&#

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