Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

The Founder’s New Insight Smart founders are never satisfied with simply executing their current business model, they are constantly observing, orienting and deciding whether their current business model can be made better. It’s a natural part of learning about your customers and business model.)

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 217

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Market segments drive your business model.

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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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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 255

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

The key things I want students to take from the class are: Understand that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a profitable business model. Learn how to put together a business model , not a business plan. Class Logistics. As described in the previous post , this is a hands-on class.

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Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 236

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. We had validated our new assumptions by a set of orders, and we had pivoted on our business model.

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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. By now the company may have found and settled on a repeatable business model.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

It may just be that the message of building companies that have predictable revenue and profit models hasn’t percolated through the VC business model. Unfortunately, regardless of a VC’s age, their business models are suffering and IPOs seem to be a thing of the past for at least a while longer.

Silicon Valley 236

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 236

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Ps: my limited perspective comes with self recognition of a lack of hands on experience always enjoy it when I stop in to read here Steve Reply Aamir , on July 2, 2009 at 10:18 am Said: Awesome post Steve… but isn’t drawing the business model for a gaming company going to be easy? Make game, market, sell, profit?

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

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.

Technology 145

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 145

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

When I retired after 21 years working in 8 startups, I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the business school at the University of California Berkeley. Established businesses execute business models while startups search for them. They thought I could tell good stories about what it was like to start a company.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2011

Second, to share how my how my thinking about entrepreneurship as a distinct practice and how Customer Development as one of its central components has evolved over the last decade. Fourth, as a public official in the State of California , to offer a window on how public policy on California Coastal protection gets made.

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Silicon Valley California Vertical Customer Development 217

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

We’re now piloting our application with Tree Farmers in California and working with crop specialists at U.C. We think we have a real business.” Build continuous customer discovery into your company DNA. An MVP eliminates parts of your business model that create complexity. ” It was a fun coffee.

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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. Hype before shipping any product is an obvious flaw, but what about hyping products that have shipped but have zero business model?

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Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. Mainstream Entrepreneurship recognizes that with the Lean LaunchPad class we now have a methodology of making small businesses fail less.

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Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 313

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

In the next few posts that follow, I’ll describe more specifically how this model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. The greatest risk in startups —and hence the greatest cause of failure—is not the technology risk of developing a product but in the risk of developing customers and markets.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 245

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

“vertical&# works perfectly fine in quickly telling you about a general direction of a company’s business model. What is it that’s unique about the market I’m in? We’ll talk about the implications of what vertical market you’re entering in the next few posts. Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here.

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Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Rob Adams, the director of MootCorp, is doing an amazing job at providing value to all participants, whether it’s feedback on their business model or making the right introductions. MootCorp in particular has an impressive track record of putting early stage tech companies on the right path towards funding.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 158

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Fixing the Missing Pieces of Infrastructure.

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Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Angel Investor 320

Steve Blank

MARCH 7, 2012

Startups are in fact only temporary organizations, organized to search –not execute–for a scalable and repeatable business model. We trying to teach students a methodology that combines customer development, agile development, business models and pivots. Only in California!

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Lean Business Model Agile United States 263

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Initially your job is to understand each of the parts of your business model before you hire someone to do it. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) But the rest; sales, marketing, bus dev is actually customer development that the founder needs to understand.

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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. few years ago I also started following Alexander Osterwalder in his blog about his Business Model Generation -mantra.

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Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

The dysfunctional family theory may explain why founders who excel in the chaotic early phases of a company throw organizational hand grenades into their own companies after they find a repeatable and scaleable business model and need to switch gears into execution. Let me know what you think. Comments and brickbats welcomed.

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Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 312

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

The Lean LaunchPad class teaches students how to build a Lean Startup using business model design, customer development and agile engineering. Teams have to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week.) I gave Frank the same advice I offered all the other universities who asked. Make it Better.

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Lean New York City New York Customer Development 277

Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2012

Doing good for all [or at least citizens of California]. Fixing our business model to fix our budget crisis. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development , Teaching. ” Our goal(s) could be: Looking good. Doing well by our enrolled students. Attracting donations.

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Portfolio California Customer Development Framework 329

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

Before OpenGov, he built California Common Sense , the open data and government watchdog non-profit. These seem like small things, but they turn out to be really important, because as you’re pivoting, changing your business model and changing your product, there need to be some things that are stable to keep people on the same page.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

Before OpenGov, he built California Common Sense , the open data and government watchdog non-profit. These seem like small things, but they turn out to be really important, because as you’re pivoting, changing your business model and changing your product, there need to be some things that are stable to keep people on the same page.

Cofounder 283

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 283

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

After a week of hectic customer discovery , the team further refined their new business model. Their initial customer segment were upwardly mobile professionals with $2-10K discretionary purchases/year (excluding travel,) and their revenue model was affiliate program fees. Where is the best place for your business?

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South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 233

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. Customer Development This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the Customer Development process.

Silicon Valley 236

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 236

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

– Cornell University; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center at Carnegie Mellon University; and the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California at San Diego. Cray called two years ago and bought it back for parts for an unnamed customer still running one.

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Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 212

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. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 126

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 126

Steve Blank

JULY 19, 2016

Jim lectures at University of California Santa Barbara and elsewhere on the process of discovering successful business models. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. Before AppFolio, Jim created the product requirements for GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting which was acquired by Citrix.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Sweden 120

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. Me – “Have you used Company x’s product? Do you know have they distribute their product?

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Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 208

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2015

One OSRD project – the Manhattan Project – the development of the atomic bomb – was so secret and important that it was spun off as a separate program. The Rapid Equipping Force operated with speed and urgency to deliver solutions to real customer problems. After the war the U.S. split up the functions of the OSRD.

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Steve Blank

JULY 23, 2009

Startups were not just smaller versions of a large company, they were about invention, innovation and iteration - of business model, product, customers and on and on. At these startups both the problem and solution were unknown. Startups were doing discovery of the problem and solution in real-time.

Silicon Valley 121

Silicon Valley RSS California Chad 121

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

For the first 25 years HP’s business model was static. Of course HP did ship new products and innovate, but their center of innovation was sustaining innovation , around the core of their existing business. Elephant Graveyard Reinvention of large companies, while making for great case studies are rare.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 190

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

Fourth , would the same Lean Startup methodology (business model design, customer development and agile engineering) used in the Lean LaunchPad and NSF I-Corps class work here? Multiple teams have been engaged by government, prime contractor and VC firms for follow-on discussions/engagements. Result: Hell yes.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 131

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

Fourth , would the same Lean Startup methodology (business model design, customer development and agile engineering) used in the Lean LaunchPad and NSF I-Corps class work here? Multiple teams have been engaged by government, prime contractor and VC firms for follow-on discussions/engagements. Result: Hell yes.

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Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 120