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CustomerDevelopment is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. And it’s certainly not CustomerDevelopment.
For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of CustomerDevelopment , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The CustomerDevelopment process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.
CustomerDevelopment ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. CustomerDevelopment) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# My advice was to start a policy of making reversible decisions before anyone left his office or before a meeting ended.
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) CustomerDevelopment (98) CustomerDevelopment Manifesto (..)
Filed under: CustomerDevelopment , Venture Capital | Tagged: Entrepreneurs « CustomerDevelopment Manifesto: Market Type (part 4) CustomerDevelopment 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.
CustomerDevelopment 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.
However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a CustomerDevelopment process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model. » Dig for Leadership - Stories that try to make the world a better place. , carry on reading.
Crammed into Silicon Valley along with millions of people around the San Francisco Bay it’s hard to fathom that 15 air miles away was a stretch of California coast that was still rural. At the end of two days I realized, This was the first full weekend I had taken off since I had moved to California 3 years ago. How did I miss that?
his next article on SuperMac, “Building the Killer Team – Mission, Intent, and Values&# , Steve further pounds the table on some principles of leadership that I think are [.] on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog. Reply How to close a term sheet quickly - Venture Hacks , on April 28, 2009 at 10:43 am Said: [.]
CustomerDevelopment/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. It’s what my textbook on CustomerDevelopment describes. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford.
Filed under: CustomerDevelopment , 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.
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) CustomerDevelopment (98) CustomerDevelopment Manifesto (..)
Forget the Hypertext idea and come on back to California. He and his wife Gwen would found the Computer Museum, first in the lobby of DEC headquarters, then in Boston (and now as the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.) The response from across the country? We’re building a supercomputer.”
This year, with the kids grown, their choice was to fly up from Southern California and spend the holidays at our ranch. So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, CustomerDevelopment, Lean Startups, etc. California, where even the rabbits are bigger than life!
The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the CustomerDevelopment process are you on? CustomerDevelopment 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.
TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to CustomerDevelopment are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of CustomerDevelopment and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.
If you are a practitioner of CustomerDevelopment, ESL was doing it before most us were born. When Terman said no, Sylvania, a tube company which built proximity fuse tubes in WWII, won the contract and set up its Electronic Defense Lab (EDL) in Mountain View California in the middle of an orchard.
I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. 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.”
But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customerdevelopment process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. For example, complex new semiconductor architectures, (i.e.
Reply steveblank , on March 28, 2009 at 7:27 am Said: Denis, Over time the blogs tagged under the “customerdevelopment&# category will build up a narrative of illustrative stories of how customerdevelopment evolved in practice. What part of this blog should I read if I am also reading the book?
My first business trip to the valley was to visit California Microwave. My first job out of RPI was as an engineer on the EF-111, an electronic counter measures laden derivative of the original F-111 swing-wing fighter / bomber. Had not yet heard of Silicon Valley at the time, but the siren call was already sounding.
The Times Square Strategy discussion I had with Eric Ries , was still top of mind, so instead of my standard CustomerDevelopment lecture , I offered my thoughts on: the origin of CustomerDevelopment, where we are today, and where does CustomerDevelopment go, and how you can help get it there.
This post describes a solution – the CustomerDevelopment 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.
We four instructors would grumble and complain to one another about our lack of leadership. I’ve built my company using the CustomerDevelopment Model from Day One. I recently completed the Validation step (less the industry analyst presentations) and am ready to move on to Customer Creation.
And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in CustomerDevelopment. It’s one of the subtle distinctions that at times gets lost in the process.
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) CustomerDevelopment (98) CustomerDevelopment Manifesto (..)
Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of CustomerDevelopment , came from the ashes. era&# , but really interested in your take on these “free&# models through the prism of CustomerDevelopment. We all know how that ends up.
The CustomerDevelopment talk can be seen here. That said I will be giving a CustomerDevelopment talk at TIECON , Saturday May 16th, 1:30 thanks for asking. steve CustomerDevelopment is Hard. Thanks to Dave McClure and Leonard Speiser for the opportunity to speak. It starts at ~40:30 in the video.
From the king of customerdevelopment, 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.
When CustomerDevelopment 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. Founders Pad. Bend needed its own venture firm.
CustomerDevelopment This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the CustomerDevelopment process. Employ customerdevelopment. Because at times facts may create cognitive dissonance with the beliefs that got you started and funded.
Before leaving California, the engineers gave me a course in this specialized receiver design. As a going away gift my roommates got me a joke disguise kit with a fake nose, glasses and mustache.
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?
CustomerDevelopment.) Unlike large corporations, startup meetings are not about achieving consensus for every objection raised. They are about forward motion, momentum and feedback loops (i.e. For a startup “No Corner Cases&# needs to be an integral part of your corporate DNA.
Filed under: CustomerDevelopment « 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.&#
That’s in stark contrast to the traditional Product Development Model where it’s expected a customer is already there and waiting and it’s simply a matter of [.] familiar with CustomerDevelopment you should be. It’s very different than the traditional product development model.
I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the CustomerDevelopment 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.
And you’d like me to do my talk on CustomerDevelopment and startups?” “No, we’re the other CIA.” Steve my name is Donald xx, and I’m the head of external affairs of the CIA’s venture capital firm and we’d like you to keynote our conference.” Do you mean the Culinary Institute of America?
Before OpenGov, he built California Common Sense , the open data and government watchdog non-profit. So we dedicate the beginning of each of our week to our leadership team meetings and then an “all hands” meeting. Filed under: CustomerDevelopment.
Before OpenGov, he built California Common Sense , the open data and government watchdog non-profit. So we dedicate the beginning of each of our week to our leadership team meetings and then an “all hands” meeting. Filed under: CustomerDevelopment.
I can’t get this one out of my head. ———— The VENONA Project One of the most interesting (declassified) stories of cryptography is the deciphering of Soviet communications to their diplomatic missions in the U.S during World War II.
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