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 323

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 323

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. The cost of attending a Startup Weekend Next is ridiculously inexpensive. 28 in more than 25 cities worldwide.

Startup 335

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

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 264

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 264

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. We’re going to help teams: assess regulatory risk before they design and build. gather data essential to customer purchases before doing the science.

SBIR 322

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 322

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.

Lean 308

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 308

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

While the Innovation Clusters designated specific areas of the countries where high tech was to occur, it’s the Technology Business incubators located inside these clusters where the startup companies physically reside. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. government’s SBIR and STTR programs.

Programming 288

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 288

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 291

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 291

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

Our Lean LaunchPad class requires student teams to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week while they’re building the product. The class is designed for students who said they want a hands-on experience in what it takes to build a startup – not just writing a business plan or listening to lectures.

Lean 287

Lean Customer Development Business Model Email 287

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 310

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 310

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

While the Innovation Clusters designated specific areas of the countries where high tech was to occur, it’s the Technology Business incubators located inside these clusters where the startup companies physically reside. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. government’s SBIR and STTR programs.

Programming 180

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 180

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

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. Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.)

Technology 146

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 146

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. He showed me a little Korean hard drive portable music player, not much more than the Compaq reference design it was based off of. It was fun watching it happen. com Michael Robertson.

Video 190

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 190

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

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

We had endless arguments internally about what features it should include, how the avatars should look, and how much it should cost. Finally the day came, we unleashed the landing page, emailed our existing customers, and started advertising online. Just load them all in and choose a low cost-per-click. I used to use $.05,

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

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

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? Platform selection and technical design - if your business strategy is to create a low-burn, highly iterative lean startup, youd better be using foundational tools that make that easy rather than hard.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

Continuous innovation requires the imagination and courage to challenge the initial hypotheses of your current business model (channel, cost, customers, products, supply chain, etc.) A company developing software would have to buy computers and license software from other companies and hire the staff to run and maintain it.

Restful 249

Restful Silicon Valley San Jose Puerto Rico 249

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 Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. We were losing money on every board we sold. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 213

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 213

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

So when Google started pushing AdSense (ads for affiliate or 3rd party sites) they had a HUGE cost advantage. it seems that Twitter should have the same Google-like cost advantage. Quirky - Platform facilitating collaborative design of consumer products through an online community. Google had huge destination traffic.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

It will cost you your job.” Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. 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.

Silicon Valley 272

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 272

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

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 256

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 256

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. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Blog at WordPress.com.

Vertical 167

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 167

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, February 20, 2009 Work in small batches Software should be designed, written, and deployed in small batches. Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations. Take the example of a design team prepping mock-ups for their development team.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. The “customers’” contracts funded the company. A-12 OXCART CIA Spyplane ESL found other ways to stay very close to its customers. could design and produce, and a good part of it was coming from Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley 201

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 201

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

Big brands have the advantage of a strong reputation and a crew of professional designers behind their sites. If you want to compete with them, you’re going to have to develop a reputation and a strong web presence yourself. On places like Facebook, where the CPM (cost to reach 1,000) is the cheapest of any ad network ever: Source.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Back then, an entrepreneur used a serial product development process that proceeded step-by-step with little if any customer feedback. They are: value proposition, product/service the company offers (along with its benefits to customers). customer segments, such as users and payers or moms or teens. Testing Hypotheses.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

We talked about some simple design rules and I remember him thanking me for coming, saying we were the only chip company who cared enough to call on him (little did he know.) Long gone from Zilog I saw the picture of the original Macintosh design team. I thought nothing about the meeting until years later.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 146

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Most enterprise customers do NOT want frequent releases for two main reasons (1)They have heavy internal release processes: long QA cycle, security reviews, etc; and (2) It is costly to communicate and educate their own customers about a new set of features. Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and what.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Different market opportunities present radically different startup risks and costs. Vertical markets are a risk and cost reduction strategy. But as I learned from my students this “one-size-fits-all” approach does not work for all startups. Just for discussion, the markets I chose were: Web 2.0, You can bootstrap without VC money.

Vertical 159

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 159

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 9, 2013

And then, of course, other business owners stay aloof from customers for a different, more instinctual reason: In a digital age dominated by email and computer screens, they simply don’t know how to interact with customers face-to-face and avoid doing so at all costs. Customers require consistent care and investment.

Customer 170

Customer Technical Review Florida Cofounder 170

The Equity Kicker

SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

That has resulted in a number of policies designed to stimulate startup activity of which the most important is the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and it’s younger brother the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS). Both of these schemes use the tax code to make it more attractive for high-net-worth individuals to invest in startups.

Early Stage 119

Early Stage Development Team Review Technical Review Software Review 119

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2012

It’s hard to believe these are the methods and tools of a profession designed to attract and persuade us to become customers — especially when “we the buyers” increasingly ignore them. Build strong customer communities. Company websites that give us no clue what the business actually does. Pushy salespeople.

Marketing 234

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Social Network 234

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

So they systematically designed electronic devices called “jammers&# to shut down each part of the German air defense system. The German air defense system had 100′s of early warning radars, and thousands of radar controlled anti-aircraft guns, and Ground Controlled Intercept radars to guide the fighters into the bombers.

Silicon Valley 211

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 211