Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. In ten years, from the early 1950′s to the early 1960′s, the valley went through a hiring frenzy as jobs in microwave companies went from 700 to 7,000. to do that.

Silicon Valley 302

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 302

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? Let’s start with how much value you think you’ll create for your customer if they use your product in terms of hours saved, costs avoided, extra sales, better conversion rates or whatever.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

He just hired Meg Whitman. Given the stock market was buying “the story and vision” of anything internet, inflated expectations were more important than traditional metrics like customers, growth, revenue, or heaven forbid, profits. Startups with huge burn rates – building leases, staff, PR and advertising – ran out of money.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

We hired an interior designer and a great facilities person to manage the process. Reply Jerry Ji , on May 15, 2009 at 4:56 pm Said: When my startup starts hiring, I’ll make “The Four Steps to the Epiphany&# a prerequisite reading for every interviewer. Lessons Learned N ew buildings are a distraction.

Silicon Valley 233

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 233

VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

In fact, they were screaming at them to dramatically reduce their burn rates. Ditch the business plan and when assumptions are proven wrong, pivot Customer Development: Build a product your customers want (vs. Angel investment, which was small to start with, disappeared, and most corporate VCs shut down.

Lean 214

Lean Seed Capital Startup Burn Rate 214

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Do some Customer Development instead. The product didnt convert well enough, the mainstream customers we were driving werent ready for the concept, and the event fed expectations about how successful the product was going to be that turned out to be hyper-inflated. Help you raise money. But dont be too sure.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

raised their voices in a annoyed investor tone) that the headcount and its attendant burn rate combined with the lack of revenue meant the company would run out of money much sooner than anyone planned. Companies in New Markets who hire and execute like they’re in an Existing Market burn through their cash and go out of business.

Revenue 232

Revenue Balance Sheet Hockey Stick Burn Rate 232

The Startup Toolkit

JUNE 27, 2012

Similarly, I think that working nights & weekends is an awesome way to start doing customer development and answering the big questions about your business. 3] I mean organisational scale rather than technical scale — hiring, funding, advertising, etc. 2] Data via the startup genome project. [3]

Burn Rate 35

Burn Rate PR Campaign Advertising 35

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Hire the absolute best and the brightest, true experts in their fields, who in turn can hire the smartest people possible to staff their departments. Here are a few: We know what customers want. Worse was the large staff in departments appropriate to a mainstream-scale product, especially in customer service and QA.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150