Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring PR Agencies. Bettina said, “We want to drive customer demand into our channel.” That’s smart I thought, a real clear charter for PR. The same is true for hiring the PR agency.

PR 321

PR China Lean Channel 321

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2010

Wait a minute, what about the rest of Customer Development ? Aren’t you going to validate your hypotheses by first getting some customers?”. Now I was confused, and I asked, “Well what do you guys believe – Customer Development or launch on a schedule?” Filed under: Ardent , Customer Development.

Customer Development 316

Customer Development Singapore Channel PR 316

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring PR Agencies. Bettina said, “We want to drive customer demand into our channel.” That’s smart I thought, a real clear charter for PR. The same is true for hiring the PR agency.

PR 213

PR China Lean Channel 213

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

But the bubble mantra of get “big fast” and “first mover advantage” demanded tens of millions more to create a “brand.” Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development. In the new bubble PR may be your new best friend, so invest in it.

Internet 335

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

For example, I recently created a customer validation exercise around the Lean Startup Workshop. It allowed me to assess the market demand for that offline product before I had the final product baked. On-demand utility pricing for services (aka "cloud computing"). Labels: product development 2comments: Anonymoussaid.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. Each new segment you attempt to serve can increase scope , adding to your workload and demanding more of your limited resources.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Many journalists and conference organizers attempt to fill this demand by giving successful entrepreneurs the opportunity to tell their stories: in magazines, on blogs, and on stage. The higher the vanity ratio, the more effective the PR. It helps companies with PR. The higher the vanity ratio, the more effective the PR.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean PR Metrics 167

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

HOF Capital has stitched together our workflow across Google Suite , Slack , Airtable , Asana , Streak , and some other tools (leveraging Zapier for basic 3rd party integration, in addition to custom development for certain other integrations). Kushim , Totem , and VisibleVC focus on serving this need among VCs.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 27, 2011

This is lean development without any customer development. These are the times when there is more demand for startups. Every startup needs PR, but this is even more true of flips. Creating quick buzz and social proof is not the same a developing long-term customer development, but it pays off.

Lean 144

Lean Startup Agile Coder 144

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

For example, our goal could be: Create demand for our products and drive it into our sales channel. Create awareness of our company and brand for potential customers. Founders ask me all the time whether they should hire a PR agency. Customer Discovery Never Stops. Filed under: Customer Development , Marketing.

Marketing 318

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 318

market-by-numbers.com

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Market By Numbers on Twitter | Entries RSS | Comments RSS Market By Numbers High-Tech Marketing and Customer Development Home What is Customer Development? If your driving force is a User Type that demands a certain level of usability and aesthetics, your product must minimally reach that level to test your objective.

San Diego 40

San Diego RSS Lean Elevator Pitch 40

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

It was an educational mission to tell the story of who our customers were (and by inference who all the graphics board customers were) and why the current reviews of these graphics boards weren’t adequately measuring what was important to this large market. The head of the PR agency agreed that we would work together as a team.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 128

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth. In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. Your design or ad agencies can impress you with their awards, but if you’re not moving product or creating demand, you’ve missed the point.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Freemium models have their own scorekeeping.)

Customer Development 229

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 229

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

While one could argue that a trade show is just another demand creation activity akin to advertising or PR, trade shows are the closest eyeball-to-eyeball contact you’re company is going to have with customers, competitors and partners. What didn’t? Go to trade shows like it matters.

Silicon Valley 139

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 139

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

If the VP of Sales doesn’t think that generating end user awareness and ultimately demand for them is worthwhile, then one of you is an idiot. The Message Sitting around a conference room table brainstorming messages that might resonate with customers, or worse having a PR agency doing that for you, is a firing offense in a small company.

Silicon Valley 207

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 207

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

Every marketing communication hire couldn’t wait to produce the next great ad or PR program. 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 my experience, every marketer with an MBA wants to “do strategy.”

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 133

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

Silicon Valley Product Startup RSS 271

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers. Thus, these pages.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

I know one company demanding something like 15K just to use his product in my portal. Everything Seth said is absolutely spot on, except I’d encourage founders to make sure they do some customer development (even in the consumer space) in parallel to cranking out the first product. Seriously mean it too.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

until I couldn't seem to find a way from getting away from all these nasty, vulgar teens (or people pretending to be teens) demanding explicit sex every time I went there. Linden labs works with, and treats their customer base better than IMVu ever did> I KNOW> i was a member of the now defunct APC. So I gave up. Desperately.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

In the world of startups, this is like trying to sell a product to a very demanding customer who needs to see a lot of features before buying. Why do you think outsources have been happy to generate all this PR the past few years about people losing their jobs to India? Tough sell. Resegmented market (low cost variety).

San Francisco 89

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Ruby Lean 89