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. OK, somehow we got them interested.

Lean 307

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 307

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Over the years Dino and I brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. However, four critical advances over the past decade (cloud, accelerators, Lean, and Angels) not only changed the math for tech investing but made regional tech clusters possible. Build $10-30M funds.

Early Stage 295

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 295

Steve Blank

JANUARY 2, 2014

This post is part of our series on the National Science Foundation I-Corps Lean LaunchPad class in Life Science and Health Care at UCSF. Doctors, researchers and Principal Investigators in this class got out of the lab and hospital talked to 2,355 customers, tested 947 hypotheses and invalidated 423 of them.

Lean 250

Lean Algorithm Customer Development IP 250

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

” She looked at bit puzzled, so I continued to explain… One of the virtues of using the Business Model Canvas as part of a Lean Startup is that it helps you frame each one of your nine critical hypotheses. Filed under: Customer Development. Customer Development'

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Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Eric Ries , entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Lean Startup. Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology.

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Lean Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder Channel 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

As our Lean LaunchPad for Life Sciences class winds down, a good number of the 26 teams are trying to figure out whether they should go forward to turn their class project into a business. It was a lifelong lesson that taught me to never start a business where you hate your customers. see 0:30 in the video below). It never goes well.

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Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 330

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 more challengine than it appears, and method of insulation is supporting varied input channels.

Silicon Valley 261

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 261

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. Fundamentally, lean startups do more with less, because they systematically find and eliminate waste that slows down value creation. Another terrific post, Eric.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

—– Lean Innovation Management. In the last five years “ Lean Startup ” methodologies have enabled entrepreneurs to efficiently build a startup by searching for product/market fit rather than blindly trying to execute. The result will be: a new, Lean version of the Three Horizons of Innovation. Here’s how.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. Two paragraphs, Five bullets. It didn’t take more.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. Eric -- This is a pretty interesting idea.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

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

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. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) Eventually, I came to summarize these themes with the phrase " the lean startup." Lean is one of the major trends shaping our world, and its impact goes beyond just optimizing our supply chains.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

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

MARCH 19, 2009

I wanted to understand how customers bought our products. I knew we were selling through a multi-level indirect sales channel. That’s a mouthful to say that our sales people didn’t sell our products directly to a customer. Market messages to indirect sales channels are just like that. The result is usually hilarious.

Silicon Valley 213

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 213

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards. So when he saw the browser it instantly dawned on him that this would be the greatest customer development tool ever. The Wedding Channel. Shopping.com. Commission Junction.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

Since we had gotten out of the software business when we came out of Chapter 11 , and our sales channel didn’t know what to do with software, we licensed ReelTime to Adobe. But you probably never heard of ReelTime. You may know it by its final name. It was fun watching it happen.

Video 190

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 190

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Recently, he was bitten by the lean startup bug and has started writing about his experiences attempting to apply lean startup and customer development principles. Ive previously named his post Achieving Flow in a Lean Startup as one of my favorite blog posts of 2009. Things started to slip.

Continuous Deployment 151

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Instead, each potential customer has to go through a self-serve process of signing up and paying money. Because they have no presence in the market, they have to find distribution channels to bring in customers. But in the meantime, by iterating on their product with customers, they have a chance to get there on their own.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Mass blasts of information are ineffective, because the broadcast channels are suffering from information overload (even in social media). Test-marketing is now easier than ever before, thanks to leveraged distribution channels like AdWords and Facebook. There are too many products clamoring for attention. 12comments: Dougvs said.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions and even billions of users can happen in years versus decades. Continuous innovation requires the imagination and courage to challenge the initial hypotheses of your current business model (channel, cost, customers, products, supply chain, etc.)

Restful 249

Restful Silicon Valley San Jose Puerto Rico 249

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. The Lean LaunchPad was designed to fill that void. Syllabus is here. This is the End.

Lean 288

Lean Business Model Agile Customer Development 288

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

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.

Customer Development 255

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 255

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

JANUARY 21, 2016

And going for crowdfunding before you do customer discovery with customers can lock you into the wrong idea too early. These topics were the focus of interviews with the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on SiriusXM Channel 111 (airing weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern). Clay : Yeah.

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

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. are what make it a business, 2) business plans are fine for large companies where there is an existing market, existing product and existing customers.

Wiki 318

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 318

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

There are other models, in other distribution channels. As the AppStore becomes increasingly saturated one of the goals of the socialDeck platform is to create an alternative distribution channel -- a way to drive installs of casual games outside of the AppStore oligopoly. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

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. The Customer Validation lesson of, “no formal launch until you have early sales validating the product and sales process&# was also born here.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

My two cents is that a business plan is the single place to collect your thinking about about your: business model, distribution channel, demand creation plan, financial assumptions, and customer and product development plan. I was simply confused about what a plan was for.

Business Plan 160

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 160

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2014

It’s Not A Conversion Problem, It’s A Customer Development Problem. Think About Customer Experience, Not Just Conversion Optimization. Channel Partners. ” His answer, “I’m a big fan of the lean startup methodology[.] How To Come Up With A Value Proposition In A Crowed Market.

Developer 104

Developer Cofounder API New Jersey 104

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

Roominate , one of my favorite Lean LaunchPad teams came out to the ranch last week for a strategy session. The Roominate dollhouse building kits are being sold via their own website and soon, retail channels. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire.

PR 321

PR China Lean Channel 321

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

She has a separate team, with its own culture and office, and a mandate straight from top management to innovate without regard to the company’s historic products, channels, or supply chain. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? So far, so good. Expo SF (May. .

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

A Lean Startup methodology offers entrepreneurs a framework to focus on what’s important: Business Model Discovery. Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. Over 10 weeks each team gets out and talks to 100 customers. Those days are over.

Oakland 330

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 330

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2014

Since the Pivot is one of the core concepts of the Lean Startup I was puzzled. A pivot is a fundamental insight of the Lean Startup. 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.

Business Model 333

Business Model Lean Customer Development Channel 333