Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

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. We were positing that 20 years of teaching “how to write a business plan” might be obsolete. Would we signs of success early?

Lean 307

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 307

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. Startups wrote business plans, generated expansive 5-year forecasts and executed (hired, spent and built) to the plan.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2014

We didn’t know it at the time, but with that investment we had paid for front-row VIP seats to witness the origins of Customer Development and the Lean Startup. Our initial business plan started with an incorrectly identified buyer, value propositions that were wrong, and guesses everywhere else.

Maryland 280

Maryland Lean DC Virginia 280

VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

In a capital scarce environment following the Dot Com crash, startups needed to do more with less and survive long enough to generate revenue. Most principles of Lean Startup remain true, as described by Steve Blank in The Lean Startup Changes Everything : Business Plans are dead: Startups a series of hypothesis that need to be tested.

Lean 214

Lean Seed Capital Startup Burn Rate 214

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

The Business Model Canvas is a great way to diagram it out. Each side of a market has it’s own Value Proposition, Customer Segment and Revenue Model.) They learned that one their core customer hypothesis about their buyers, “startups would want to buy computing capacity on a “spot market” was wrong.

Customer 241

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 241

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2010

It’s the combination of Business Model Design and Customer Development. Business Model Design. Today every business organization from startup to large company uses the words “business model.” Business Model Design Gets Dynamic, Customer Development Gets Strategic. Pivots and Iterations.

Customer Development 332

Customer Development Business Model Developer Customer 332

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

With an out-of-this-world business plan. When it was spun out as a a separate company, Iridium’s 1990 business plan had assumptions about potential customers, their problems and the product needed to solve that problem. A Business Plan Frozen in Time. This business plan was a static document.

Business Plan 335

Business Plan Customer Business Model Customer Development 335

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. We were lucky to learn about Customer Development early on in the life of our startup. It made more sense than our 60 page business plan predicated on a B-school class and a supernatural ability to predict the future. Focus on revenue from day one.

Customer Development 231

Customer Development Developer Customer California 231

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

It starts with “Plan-As-You-Go” instead of detailed, formal business plans. Lean Planning started with Tim Berry ‘s 2008 “ Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan ” which was a new way for entrepreneurs to think about planning. The business plan should no longer be just a single event.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. What plan says that?

Customer Development 229

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 229

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

They are: value proposition, product/service the company offers (along with its benefits to customers). customer segments, such as users and payers or moms or teens. distribution channels to reach customers and offer them the value proposition. customer relationships to create demand. The same is true in a Lean Startup.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

No Business Plan Survives First Contact With A Customer – The 5.2 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. The Proof Is In The Revenue.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

You would think that would be enough to get wrong, but entrepreneurs and investors compound this problem by assuming that all startups grow and scale by executing the Revenue Plan. All discussion focused on “missing the revenue plan.”. Revenue Plan Needs to Match Market Type. They don’t. What went wrong?

Revenue 232

Revenue Balance Sheet Hockey Stick Burn Rate 232

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

All teams raised their hands and screamed: we hundreds of angels and dozens of VCs, all of them say they will only fund deals with prototypes, beta customers, first revenue and executive teams all in place, and they say it will be 2 years from now because their coffers are out of cash and LPs in default. Yeah, I said.

Vertical 159

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 159

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2016

Transportation partners play an enormous role in the supply chain as they bring products into distribution centers and sometimes directly to customers. Develop Relationships with Supply Chain Partners. Develop relationships with each of your supply chain partners and make communication a top priority.

Management 145

Management Forecast Los Angeles San Francisco 145

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

JANUARY 14, 2014

A pivot can change any of nine different things in your business model. A pivot may mean you changed your customer segment, your channel, revenue model/pricing, resources, activities, costs, partners, customer acquisition – lots of other things than just the product. A Pivot is not just changing the product.

Business Model 333

Business Model Lean Customer Development Channel 333

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

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

For decades startups were managed by pretending the company would follow a predictable path (revenue plan, scale, etc.) In fact, for decades if you drew this diagram on day one of a startup VC’s would nod sagely and everyone would get to work heading to first customer ship. The Revenue Plan – The Third Fatal Assumption.

Burn Rate 252

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 252

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

The idea of a Business Model competition first emerged when I realized that Business Plan writing ought to be taught in English Departments – as they’re the best example of creative writing entrepreneurs will ever do. The Business Plan ?- And your revenue plan is something more than a hallucination.

Business Model 270

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 270

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

Your job as a founder is to quickly validate whether the model is correct by seeing if customers behave as your model predicts. Most of the time the darn customers don’t behave as you predicted. How Does Customer Development, Agile Development and Lean Startups Fit? Business Plan Versus Business Model.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. What’s the worst case?

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. Therefore, focusing on execution and delivering a product or service based on those initial, untested hypotheses is a going-out-of-business strategy.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Many entrepreneurship courses focus on teaching students “how to write a business plan.” If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know I believe that: 1) a product is just a part of a startup, but understanding customers, channel, pricing, etc. This class is not about how to write a business plan.

Wiki 318

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 318

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

The art of entrepreneurship and the science of Customer Development is not just getting out of the building and listening to prospective customers. He got my attention when he said, “following your customer development stuff is making my company fail.” Customer Development = The pursuit of customer understanding.

Customer 330

Customer Business Model Customer Development Startup 330

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

There’s nothing wrong with a business that supports you and perhaps an extended family. But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. With 317 million people the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

Those who don’t make it into the class are offered a variety of on- and off-line tools, including government-funded translations of Steve’s nine-part Udacity.com Customer Development lectures , excerpts from the Startup Owner’s Manual in Spanish, and they’ve translated a long list of Code Academy courses and other tools as well.

Colombia 327

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 327

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter. They taught you about customers, markets and profits. The Business Plan (Concept- Alpha-Beta - FCS ) became the playbook for startups. The New Exits.

Internet 335

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. That’s because the model is based on assumptions about customers that are totally unproven.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

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. Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan Business Model versus Business Plan'

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

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 Focus on Execution Versus Learning and Discovery The product development model assumes that customers needs are known, the product features are known, and your business model is known.

Customer Development 245

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 245

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

Those who don’t make it into the class are offered a variety of on- and off-line tools, including government-funded translations of Steve’s nine-part Udacity.com Customer Development lectures , excerpts from the Startup Owner’s Manual in Spanish, and they’ve translated a long list of Code Academy courses and other tools as well.

Colombia 292

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 292

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

A business model for an existing company or division is not filled with hypotheses, it is filled with a series of facts. Operating divisions execute the known business model. Plans and processes are in place, and rules, job specifications, revenue, profit and margin goals have been set. We will propose some alternatives.

Business Model 334

Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 334

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far. We’d always cringe as we admitted that, no, we really only had a few thousand customers and a few thousand dollars in monthly revenue. Retention cohort analysis.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. Step 1: Start with a lean plan. Instead of sitting down to write a 40-page business plan, start with a one-page pitch. How to Write a Traditional Business Plan.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2011

Week 3 of the class and our teams in our Stanford Lean LaunchPad class were hard at work using Customer Development to get out of the classroom and test the first key hypotheses of their business model: The Value Proposition. and report the results of face-to-face customer discovery. This post is part three.

Cloud 238

Cloud Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 238

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 271