Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

In January, we introduced a new graduate course at Stanford called the " target="_blank">Lean LaunchPad. 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. Lets see if we can keep them.

Lean 307

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 307

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

We’ve pivoted our Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum. We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. “Customer Development” to test the hypotheses outside the building and. Lessons Learned.

Intellectual Property 290

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 290

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

There was nothing suggesting that startups and new ventures needed their own tools and techniques, different from those written about in HBR or taught in business schools. 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.

Technical Review 223

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 223

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

Vision Synching in a Lean Startup The Fallacy of Customer Development Entrepreneurs, Lower Investors’ Risk by Validating your Start-up Company’s Business Proposition Lessons Learned: What is customer development? billion dollar mistake. billion dollar mistake.

Customer 227

Customer Fractional CTO Viral Lean 227

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

The concepts in my Lean LaunchPad curriculum can be taught in a variety of classes–as an introduction to entrepreneurship all the way to a graduate level “ capstone class.”. Our Lean LaunchPad class requires student teams to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week while they’re building the product.

Lean 286

Lean Customer Development Business Model Email 286

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Today, I want to introduce you to a new concept for starting and growing successful companies: Lean Planning™. Before I dive too deeply into the Lean Planning methodology, it makes sense to talk about its history and where it comes from. It starts with “Plan-As-You-Go” instead of detailed, formal business plans.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I hate business plan competitions. I Love Business Plan Competitions I had a breakfast with a friend who has founded a few companies in Thailand and started the New Ventures Program at one of their universities. For all the reasons why business plan competitions are wonderful for students from outside the U.S.,

Business Plan 160

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 160

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

But to give you a sense of how fast they are moving, it’s only been a week since I posted the syllabus for our new Stanford entrepreneurship class Engr245 ( The Lean Launchpad.) Here’s the course announcement from Professor Vergara (in English): Customer Development Course in Chile – Lean Launchpad.

Chile 241

Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 241

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, January 12, 2010 Amazing lean startup resources A year ago, there was no lean startup movement. I continue to believe that the explosion of interest in the lean startup has very little to do with me. If you are attempting to apply lean startup ideas in your own business - you are not alone.

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Lean San Francisco Wiki Startup 146

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Will Price , October 11, 2010 Georgians Should Vote No - Force of Good: a blog by Lance Weatherby , October 28, 2010 Free Software for Managing a Lean Startup - Platforms and Networks , January 17, 2010 Purpose Driven Life - Journey of a Serial Entrepreneur , July 26, 2010 Two Decade-Defining Acquisitions?

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

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.

Lean 417

Lean Security Asia SBIR 417

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. This is the pivot, a crucial tactical maneuver for the lean startup [.]

Silicon Valley 261

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 261

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. This week they were testing who the customer, user, payer for the product will be (and discovering if they have a multi-sided business model , one with both buyers and sellers.) This post is part four. Syllabus is here.

Customer 241

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 241

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.

Oakland 315

Oakland Asia Lean Video 315

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

I am always surprised when critics complain that the Lean Startup’s Build, Measure, Learn approach is nothing more than “throwing incomplete products out of the building to see if they work.”. It’s time to update Build, Measure, Learn to what we now know is the best way to build Lean startups. Here’s how. Build-Measure-Learn.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

You may have read my previous posts about the Lean LaunchPad class taught at Stanford , Berkeley, Columbia , Caltech and for the National Science Foundation. I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. So what would a search process for a business model look like?

Lean 324

Lean Georgia Michigan Business Model 324

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2021

Over the weekend I got asked the best way to teach students the principles of Lean via Zoom. I realized that pre-pandemic I had put together a series of two-minute videos called “See Why.” Here’s what I suggested they offer their students: Lean in Context. No Business Plan Survives First Contact With Customers.

Lean 367

Lean Customer Development Business Model Video 367

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2013

The Harvard Business Review is offering free reprints of the May 2013 cover article, “ Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything “ Available here.

Lean 333

Lean Venture Capital Customer Development Startup 333

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

Established businesses execute business models while startups search for them. I was a lone voice inside one of the country’s leading business schools challenging the conventional wisdom of the last 40 years, proposing that everything we were teaching about starting companies was wrong. How did this happen?

Lean 224

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 224

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.

Business Model 236

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 236

Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2013

The Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship curriculum has caught fire. I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. It dawned on me that the plans were a symptom of a larger problem: we were executing business plans when we should first be searching for business models.

Lean 295

Lean Agile Customer Development Business Model 295

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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Video Silicon Valley RSS California 190

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. Thats what business is designed to do.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. Constructing a working business model is a form of ecosystem design. Startup founders need to use their own judgment to ask: which is the riskiest assumption underlying my business plan?

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Steve Blank

MAY 10, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. Class lectures were over last week, but most teams kept up the mad rush to talk to even more customers and further refine their products. Many entrepreneurship courses focus on teaching students “how to write a business plan.”

Lean 288

Lean Business Model Agile Customer Development 288

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

The best entrepreneurship textbooks and blogs assume that advice to startups is generalizable. But as I learned from my students this “one-size-fits-all” approach does not work for all startups. 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.

Vertical 159

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 159

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

We still have some collective scar tissue: the idea conjures up the hordes of dot-com hopefuls that descended on VC’s and angel investors with little more than a business plan. I hear similar things for pre-revenue startups that are on schedule, on time, and on budget - even though they are busy building something that nobody wants. (In

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2012

We’ve taught our Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship class at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and the National Science Foundation in 8 week, 10 week and 12 week versions. We decided to find out what was the Minimum Viable Product for our Lean LaunchPad class. We were going to teach the Lean LaunchPad class in 5-days.

Lean 265

Lean Business Model Customer Development New York 265

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2013

The Harvard Business Review is offering free reprints of the May 2013 cover article, “ Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything “ Available here.

Lean 225

Lean Venture Capital Customer Development Startup 225

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

Everything a large company did, a startup should do – write a business plan; hire sales, marketing, engineering; spec all the product features on day one and build everything for a big first customer ship. Not kind of wrong but going out of business wrong. We now understand that’s wrong.

Restful 249

Restful Silicon Valley San Jose Puerto Rico 249

Steve Blank

MARCH 14, 2012

Today, the second half of the Stanford Engineering Lean LaunchPad Class gave their final presentations. This team spoke face-to-face with 326 customers. As often happens, this team came into class convinced that their market research proved that their business was providing credit to underbanked customers.

Lean 254

Lean Business Model China Customer Development 254

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2016

We just finished the 6 th annual Lean LaunchPad class. For the last 6 years I’ve taught the Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford and Berkeley. business plans are fine for large companies where there is an existing market, existing product and existing customers, but they are useless in a startup where most often none of these are known.

Lean 120

Lean Incubator Business Model Channel 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 7, 2012

Today, the first half of the Stanford Engineering Lean LaunchPad Class gave their final presentations. It’s hard to believe it’s only been a year since we taught the first 10 teams in the Stanford Lean LaunchPad class. We’ll teach over 175 NSF Innovation Corps teams in the Lean LaunchPad course in 2012. Here are the first five.

Lean 263

Lean Business Model Agile United States 263

Steve Blank

JUNE 28, 2014

If you can’t see the video click here Filed under: 2 Minute Lessons , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching. 2 Minute Lessons Business Model versus Business Plan Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching'

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Customer Search Lean Business Model 320

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 4, 2013

NEXT by Startup Weekend is a wonderful next step for entrepreneurs looking for feedback on their idea or early business, while heavily leveraging the Lean methodology. We learned how to take an idea and turn it into a company the right way using the Lean Startup process.

Startup 131

Startup Vesting Cofounder Lean 131

Steve Blank

JULY 3, 2014

If you can’t see the video click here Filed under: 2 Minute Lessons , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching. 2 Minute Lessons Business Model versus Business Plan Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching'

Lean 318

Lean Business Model Customer Development Business Plan 318

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2014

Kauffman launched Founders School - a new education series to help entrepreneurs develop their businesses during the startup stage by highlighting how startups are different from big companies. You’ll learn how to: get to know your customers. get, keep and grow customers. Module 1, The Lean Method.

Intellectual Property 332

Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development Acquisition 332