Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

Yet time after time, after the product shipped, startups would find that customers didn’t use or want most of the features. The founders were simply wrong about their assumptions about customer needs. It turns out the term “visionary founder” was usually a synonym for someone who was hallucinating. The founders.

Restful 249

Restful Silicon Valley San Jose Puerto Rico 249

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 9, 2013

Unless you’re running your business from underneath a rock, you know that losing a customer is a big deal because it has a significant impact on your organizational health. Besides the loss of potential future revenue, any sunk costs (costs you initially incur to gain the customer) are unrecoverable.

Customer 170

Customer Technical Review Florida Cofounder 170

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Jeremy Johnson.

Cofounder 147

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 147

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 23, 2015

Knowing your customers is the single biggest driver of startup success, and there’s no substitute for getting out of the building to learn about their problems and needs. Jason Young , co-founder of MindBlown Labs , which makes mobile social games to teach young adults about personal finance. Get out of the building.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Colorado Customer Development 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Slowly, over time, we optimized (or eliminated) each step in the process of becoming a customer by giving us money. And one day a remarkable thing happened: we started making more than five dollars a day in revenue. Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Jeremy Johnson.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2013

They are the co-authors of The Lean Entrepreneur , and the co-founders of the Moves the Needle Group , which advises the innovation practices of Fortune 100 companies. You have to go find your own customers to experiment with, you have your own brand, so you have to think like a Lean Startup.

Lean 167

Lean Silicon Valley Agile Cofounder 167

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

If you can start getting ROI on a feature in month one of a twelve month project versus waiting until the end, youve comparatively reduced the cost of development by the revenue generated by that feature over 11 months. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

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

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Funding challenges and other issues founders face in the early days of starting up 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). Will Zell , co-founder and CEO of Nikola Labs wireless power company.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. It turned out that, during the course of the decline, one customer segment was losing customers while another was gaining customers. The company struggled mightily with how to explain this bad news to their board.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on. What is customer development?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

The full formula works like this: runway = cash on hand / burn rate # iterations = runway / speed of each iteration Very few successful companies ended up in the same exact business that the founders thought theyd be in (see Founders at Work for dozens of examples). The key is to be able to refute as many major hypotheses as you can.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

There are a whole range of valid reasons why non-developers would want to dictate the production release schedule (Seasonal/timing issues, marketing, fulfillment concerns, documentation/training, revenue controls, legal/regulatory. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

When you read stories of successful startups in the popular and business press, you usually hear about how the founders anticipated several of these challenges in their initial vision. Should you charge from day one, testing the revenue model first? Unfortunately, startup success requires getting them all right.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. He was constantly in front of customers, listening, selling, installing and learning. What I saw reminded me of some of the best and worst things I did as a founder. If not your co-founders, someone outside the company.”.

Founder 323

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 323

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

What CEOs, management teams and shareholders care about is growth —revenue growth, greater user adoption, increased market share, bigger margins, etc. There are co-working spaces in basically every city in the world—from Nepal to New York. in developing these new models. And this has created a global entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Lean 331

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 331

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

My co-author and business Partner Bob Dorf spends much of his time traveling the world teaching countries and companies how to run the Lean LaunchPad program. The program is funded by the Colombian government and modeled after the NSF Innovation-Corps program created and built by my partner and co-author Steve Blank.

Colombia 327

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 327

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Lets return to our team thats failing to hit their targets.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

We just add up the revenue we've made in the past few months from Win98 users, and compare to the pain that Win98 has caused as identified in 5Ys. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? It's so old and so buggy that it's a real pain to ship 3D software on it.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

A first order filter is whether the founders are aiming for a scalable startup. Now with customers and early revenue, it was out raising its first round of venture money. The question was: what did the founders want to do? They hired a world-class team with co-founders and early employees who shared their vision.

Hockey Stick 303

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 303

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

It wasn’t so many years ago that starting a new e-commerce business on the Internet was a complex custom development project, usually costing a million dollars or more. With a little help from a friend, you can handle expenses, revenue, and payroll, with QuickBooks or a similar package.

Cost 405

Cost Entrepreneur Burn Rate Social Media 405

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. We created UpKeep to fill this void—a cloud-based solution that was affordable for any size business.” – Ryan Chan, founder of UpKeep.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

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

JANUARY 22, 2013

My co-author and business Partner Bob Dorf spends much of his time traveling the world teaching countries and companies how to run the Lean LaunchPad program. The program is funded by the Colombian government and modeled after the NSF Innovation-Corps program created and built by my partner and co-author Steve Blank.

Colombia 292

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 292

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

Steve Blank

MAY 13, 2010

But startups can shoot themselves in the foot when founders use consultants at the wrong time or in the wrong way. They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. After a bit more discussion, I discovered the “problem in getting traction” meant revenue was zero. Consultants Don’t Pivot, Founders Do. Here’s why.

Founder 231

Founder Cofounder Business Model Customer Development 231

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

What is the right revenue model? Aside from the dramatically shorter development cycle that browser games enjoy, the split testing of features (which is intuitive to web application makers) is something that propelled Zynga's games and revenues to the top of the social games vertical.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2016

How founders find the determination to push through tough times was the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Jacqueline Ros. Christina Stembel.

Entrepreneur 267

Entrepreneur Cofounder San Francisco Campaign 267

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 27, 2014

It wasn’t so many years ago that starting a new e-commerce business on the Internet was a complex custom development project, usually costing a million dollars or more. With a little help from a friend, you can handle expenses, revenue, and payroll, with QuickBooks or a similar package.

Entrepreneur 260

Entrepreneur Burn Rate Social Media LLC 260

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Either way, you would have been better off focusing your split-test on high level metrics that measure how much customers like your product as a whole. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

We make a point of keeping our records updated in the major data-trackers tracking the VC industry, e.g., CB Insights , Crunchbase , Dow Jones , Mattermark , Palico , Preqin , Pitchbook , and ThomsonReuters , since they are a source of data to LPs and to potential co-investors interested in us. . Pitchbot.vc 3) Originate investments.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Curt Haselton , co-founder and CEO of Haselton Baker Risk Group. — Ultimately, Sunny and his co-founders killed their startup idea.

Cofounder 199

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 199

The Equity Kicker

JUNE 17, 2014

Henrik Werdelin, co-founder of Barkbox a subscription ecommerce service for dog owners wrote a great post on Medium detailing The 6 counterintuitive ways Barkbox grew to a 100m business. Each of these is about understanding and respecting the customer. In other words, the key to getting 100m revenue was customer focus.

Revenue 102

Revenue Customer Social Media Cofounder 102

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

At NextView we invest across the spectrum of seed stage companies so roughly 1/3rd of the companies we invest in are pre-product, roughly 1/3rd are post-product but pre-revenue, and perhaps 1/3rd have some very early revenue. You’re obviously not showing charts of user growth, number of customers, or revenue.

Seed Stage 149

Seed Stage B2B Seed Capital Revenue 149

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

Alistair and Ben, co-authors of the book Lean Analytics, will help you sort it out in our next webcast, Lean Analytics for Non-tech Companies. In the Udemy course, Alistair and Ben expand these basics into a description of how to create empathy, stickiness, virality, revenue, and scale. Alistair: There are plenty.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2011

As time went on, I was a co-founder or member of the starting team for six high-tech startups…. In 1999… with the company’s revenue north of $100 million…I handed the keys to a new CEO and left. Now…a decade later… that course called Customer Development … is the basis of an entirely new way to start companies.

Philadelphia 336

Philadelphia Miami Thailand Silicon Valley 336