Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Steve I have to tell you some bad news, I just showed our potential channel partners and customers a few completed pieces of the games we had. Customer Development There was nothing wrong about Rocket Science having a vision radically different than the conventional wisdom. They think the games stink.”

Silicon Valley 223

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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.

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Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

And they have channeled all this into whatever activity they could find outside of their home – sports, business, or …entrepreneurship. But a small percentage, whose brain chemistry and wiring is set for resilience, come out of this with a compulsive, relentless and tenacious drive to succeed. Let me know what you think.

Founder 312

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. Or blame my MarCom department who approved it.

Sales 120

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Reply steveblank , on May 22, 2009 at 2:39 pm Said: Morteza, The comments about “ignore this post&# were meant that if your sales channel is the web you rarely go to trade shows. You are correct all channels, web or otherwise, need to generate awareness and leads. Go to trade shows like it matters.

Silicon Valley 139

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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.

Customer Development 255

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

press and use it to generate end user demand and then drive that demand into our sales channel. Getting B-52s through the Soviet Air Defense System Startup Ethics: Albatross or Essential? Reply SuperMac War Story 6: Building The Killer Team – Mission, Intent and Values « Steve Blank , on April 9, 2009 at 5:02 am Said: [.]

Silicon Valley 128

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Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

You can be an Independent studio or do “work for hire&# (either a revenue share or buy-out model) - If you’re an independent studio you have a set of choices for distribution channel and marketing models. - We understood none of this. More detail in future posts. steve Twitted by altgate , on July 2, 2009 at 5:22 pm Said: [.]

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. End result? If they had done this, there would have been zero dollars in sales. .

Customer Development 222

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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. 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

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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

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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.

San Francisco 113

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

Creating a vertically oriented regional ecosystem is a pretty amazing accomplishment for any country or industry. But other critical hypotheses such as activities, resources, partners, channels needed testing offshore. to understand distribution channel landscape, potential partners and rough cost of customer acquisition.

Global 335

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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

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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. Employ customer development.

Silicon Valley 236

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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

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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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Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

I remember after a month or two of talking to 14-22 year old male gamers (our potential target market,) I realized that for the first time in my career I had no emotional connection to my customers or channel partners. Don’t confuse your passion for your tools with why your customers will buy your product.

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Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

We were going to do that by turning marketing into a machine to generate end user demand, drive the that demand into our sales channels, and educate our sales channels. In an early stage startup, instead of sales being up front, the point departments are likely to be product development and customer development.

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A Crowded Space

AUGUST 20, 2015

They will need to do tons of customer development. The sales and marketing channels will be complete guesses - trying lots of different things to see what works. Once the product / market fit is established and acquisition channels are better understood, the startup can enter the next phase. Where will you expand next?

Vertical 60

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www.rocketwatcher.com

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

One other basic metric I’d add is “Cost per channel&# (web, print, tradeshow, etc…) and tie in how many each channel is generating, so you get a ROI by channel as well. If you enjoyed that, you should subscribe! You can sign up for email updates, subscribe via RSS or follow me on Twitter. Rymatech Reply 13.

B2B 42

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

Intelligence As I leafed through the Cray sales material, a glossy magazine with the headline Cray Channels jumped out of the pile. The articles described the applications these users depended on and featured interviews with their most important customers. Cray Channels was describing my market, applications and customers for me.

Silicon Valley 172

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Marketing is Heard From Engineering was discussing how sophisticated the graphics portion of our computer should be, debating cost and time-to-market tradeoffs of arcane details such as double-buffering, 24 versus 32-bits of color, alpha channels, etc. Customer development isn’t just for [.] Getting out of the building.

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