Steve Blank

MARCH 12, 2014

We realized that past K-12 Entrepreneurial classes taught students “the lemonade stand” version of how to start a company: 1) come up with an idea, 2) execute the idea, 3) do the accounting (revenue, costs, etc.). These two startups served as the students’ introduction to customer development methodology.

Lean 335

Lean Customer Development Startup Silicon Valley 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

As he was learning from potential customers and providers he would ask, “What if we could have an app that allowed you to schedule low cost moves?” Filed under: Customer Development , Technology. Customer Development Technology' This was a great call.

Cofounder 336

Cofounder Founder Technical Cofounder Coder 336

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 30, 2012

The class teaches founders how to dramatically reduce their failure rate through the combination of business model design, customer development and agile development using the Startup Owners Manual. More importantly, it makes no demands of you to stand and deliver your weekly customer development progress in front of your peers.

Startup 335

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

While our teams have mentors, socialize a lot and give great demos, the goal of our class final presentations is “ Lessons Learned ” – about product/market fit, pricing, acquisition/activation costs, pricing, partners, etc. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching.

Lean 322

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 322

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

Lean 263

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 263

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

For example, if you’re building a mobile app, then the key activities are: app software development, user interface design and demand creation skills. Or if you’re building consumer electronics the key activities might be: low cost hardware design, high volume manufacturing, user interface design, consumer branding and retail distribution.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

In all of these new product and cost-focused new trends, a big problem has emerged that all of these movements have not addressed. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? I care about the thought that you’ve given to the customer problem.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Steve Blank

AUGUST 21, 2013

In the real world a big pivot in life sciences far down the road of development is a very bad sign due to huge sunk costs. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Science and Industrial Policy , Teaching. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Science and Industrial Policy Teaching'

SBIR 321

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 321

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. The first class was an introduction to the concepts of business model design and customer development. The Adventure Begins.

Lean 307

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 307

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. An interesting phenomena of the 1920s that illustrates the fragility and cost of vacuum tubes is the “Reflex Receiver&# design methodology.

Silicon Valley 302

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 302

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' Torch was the rare government program that was run like a startup – iterating and pivoting as it learned and discovered.

Programming 287

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 287

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. “Customer Development” to test the hypotheses outside the building and. Customer Segments change over time. I-Corps @ NIH Lecture Order Details.

Intellectual Property 290

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 290

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

Others complained that they had paid for plane tickets and it would cost them money to change, etc. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching' I stuck to my guns – pointing out that they had signed up for the class knowing this was the deal.

Lean 286

Lean Customer Development Business Model Email 286

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# Reply Lots of low cost experiments « Open Ambition , on April 22, 2009 at 8:58 am Said: [.] That’s why startups are agile.

Silicon Valley 309

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 309

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

They needed to be sure that what they were building was what customers wanted and needed. And if their initial guesses were wrong, they needed a process that would permit them to change early on in the product development process when the cost of changes was small – the famed “pivot”. The result?

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer development, etc. It is the key to “customer development” that Steve Blank talks about. I’m going to save that for a future blog post.

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. They’ve tested their hypotheses with literally hundreds of customer interviews on every continent in the world. Corporate elephants can dance.

Silicon Valley 239

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 239

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Reply Dan Hodgins , on November 13, 2009 at 1:12 am Said: Hi Steve, Just listened to your “Retooling Early Stage Development&# for about the 10th time tonight as I was cleaning my room. Your results may vary.

Venture Capital 245

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 245

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. As an old rule-of-thumb, startups realized that employees cost double the salaries paid, to cover office costs, health-care benefits, and workers compensation.

Cost 405

Cost Entrepreneur Burn Rate Social Media 405

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

Veritas , was the team building a low cost, residential wind turbine that average homeowners could afford. From a slow start of customer interaction they made major progress in getting out for the building. This week they refined their target market by building a map of potential customers in the U.S.

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Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 241

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

Often they’ll agree if it means a steep hourly discount or cheaper maintenance costs.) You build the product, then you have your banner customer and go get others. make for not putting customer development before writing code. In the worst cast, you can’t sell to others, but at least you made money.

Customer 231

Customer Software Review IP Technical Review 231

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. ” How many times have you heard someone agree that “it would be great if someone did X,” but when show them someone did do X, but it costs $39.99, they don’t buy? 10,000/mo means larger companies only.

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' Torch was the rare government program that was run like a startup – iterating and pivoting as it learned and discovered.

Programming 179

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 179

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

He took out an ad in the Yellow Pages (it was the early 80′s, pre Internet), which cost him $1,000 / month for a half-page ad. That gave Google a huge cost advantage. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

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

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Tips for Startups « Am I a Founder? Not enough people understand the emotional cost of being a start-up founder. The Adventure of a Lifetime. Girlfriends, wives, and moms will think you are a madman.

Entrepreneur 295

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS 295

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Waiting for images to move around the screen were not only driving them crazy, but costing them money. Performance over price : In fact, for over half of these customers performance was even more important than price! (If And by more than anything, I mean that the word performance came up time and again from these professionals.

Silicon Valley 213

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 213

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

It will cost you your job.” By accountable I meant, “we agreed on a delivery date, and between now and the delivery date it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office the day something was due and give me an excuse. That kind of accountable.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2014

In many cases, new or updated equipment offers some form of functional benefit(s) to your customers, and this can be used as a key selling point. Online marketing will continue to grow as your customers increase their mobile and tablet usage, so plan accordingly. Find New Sales Channels.

Customer 168

Customer PPC Software Review Finance 168

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

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2016

On an elementary level, this translates into efficient manufacturing at a lower cost. Suppliers also have machinery and technology issues to contend with as they create customized products. Learn how these disjointed sources of materials affect your supply chain costs and cause potential delays.

Management 145

Management Los Angeles Forecast San Francisco 145

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? While we sometimes cut the price of graphics boards, it was only because we offered our customers no compelling reasons to buy one that was priced equivalently to the market share leaders. No, not really.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 161

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Computer hardware companies were faced with their customers asking for low-cost (relatively) desktop computers they had no experience in building. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? what Market Type is your startup?

Technology 145

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 145

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

In less than a month they designed a low-cost video-capture board that plugged into the Mac and allowed you to connect a video camera and VCR. A month or two before the QuickTime public announcement in May, the SuperMac hardware engineers (who had a great relationship with the QuickTime team at Apple) started a “ skunk works ” project.

Video 190

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 190

VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

Ditch the business plan and when assumptions are proven wrong, pivot Customer Development: Build a product your customers want (vs. what you think they might need) by talking to customers and testing every aspect of the product features, pricing, etc. Cash (alone) isn’t king.

Lean 214

Lean Seed Capital Startup Burn Rate 214

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development 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.

Vertical 167

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 167

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

He welcomed us by screaming, “Do you know how much it costs every minute this line is down.&# One day, I was at the Ford Wixom auto assembly plant training my replacement and I was at met at the door by an irate plant manager. the manager followed us still yelling. Let me know what you think. Comments and brickbats welcomed.

Founder 312

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 312