Steve Blank

JULY 24, 2012

Do you have it your demo room showing it to potential customers?” Filed under: Customer Development , E.piphany , Marketing. Instead of being welcomed by the whole Onyx exec staff, this time a clearly uncomfortable product manager met me. Well how do like our integrated system?” And by the way where is it?

Seattle 265

Seattle Cofounder Engineer Sales 265

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

And inviting to the booth/dinner/private demo. General Comments for both Awareness and Lead Generation Demo’s I don’t care how small the booth or trade show is, do a canned demo every 20 to 30 minutes regardless of whether anyone is at your booth or not. Demo’s are the heart of the booth. One of them is a loser.

Silicon Valley 139

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 139

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

Unlike traditional demo days or Shark Tanks which are, “Here’s how smart I am, and isn’t this a great product, please give me money,” a Lessons Learned presentation tells the story of a team’s 10-week journey and hard-won learning and discovery. . – while simultaneously building a series of minimal viable products.

Lean 417

Lean Security Asia SBIR 417

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 11, 2011

To give a little context, I asked two of the other judges - Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits (co-authors of the excellent Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development ) - to add a bit of commentary. Great use of airbnb for their source of customer development won them 'Best #CustDev Award." Make that never.

New York City 161

New York City New York Lean SMS 161

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

Approvals tended to be based on who had the best demo and/or slides or lobbied the hardest. There was no burden on those who proposed a new idea or technology to talk to customers, build minimal viable products, test hypotheses or understand the barriers to deployment. . Ironically, by standing still, they were falling behind.

Incubator 319

Incubator Curation Engineer Government 319

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2016

The combination of the Business Model Canvas, Customer Development and Agile Engineering is an extremely efficient template for the students to follow. Demo Days Versus Lesson Learned Presentations. As a consequence, we couldn’t care less about a “Demo Day” at the end of the class. Demo of final MVP. Pivot stories.

Lean 120

Lean Incubator Business Model Channel 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Check your assumptions, what went wrong?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 29, 2012

Over Saturday and Sunday teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas and building a minimal viable product. On Sunday evening teams demo their prototypes and receive valuable feedback from a panel of experts.

St. Louis 135

St. Louis Kansas City Norway Kansas 135

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Hackathons and incubators are helpful in getting product teams focused and result in great demos, but you’re left still not knowing whether you have something beneficiaries/stakeholders/users want nor do you know what it takes to deploy the solution to the field. Demo of final MVP. It’s a ton of work. Pivot stories.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

Unlike traditional demo days or Shark Tanks which are, “here’s how smart I am, please give me money,” a Lessons Learned presentation tells the teams’ stories of a 10-week journey of hard-won learning and discovery. This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks.

Oakland 315

Oakland Asia Lean Video 315

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited. Soundbites from potential customers are encouraging. Eventually early product demos start happening but they’re rough and the product looks very alpha. Three months in, the burn is now at $70k/month.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering.

Oakland 330

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 330

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

The key principles of customer development are: There are no facts inside the building so get the heck outside. You can test your hypotheses with a series of experiments with potential customers. Rather than doing every demo of your MVP live, consider 1) recording it 2) highlighting the key points. Lessons Learned.

Customer 422

Customer Business Model Restful Video 422

ConversionXL

JUNE 14, 2021

This means buying their product, booking a demo or signing up for a trial. Sign up for a demo and go through the sales process. You can also run customer development surveys to glean target audience insights, like top pain points they want to solve. Depending on your industry, look out for the following: Ecommerce.

Software Review 158

Software Review Audience Differentiation Framework 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

In fact, this crisis was at the heart of Steve Blank ’s original impetus to develop customer development as an alternative set of milestones to use for startups.) I hear similar things for pre-revenue startups that are on schedule, on time, and on budget - even though they are busy building something that nobody wants. (In

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

How To Pitch A Product - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , August 4, 2010 I've said a bunch of times on this blog that the perfect pitch is a very short intro to provide context followed immediately by a demo. Last night at the NY Tech Meetup, John Britton of our portfolio company Twilio showed how it is done. Lessons at the end.).

Startup 191

Startup CTO Hire Cofounder Venture Capital 191

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

Most important slide: live demo Prototype product Key questions: what will it take to ship a working product? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Most important slide: lessons learned Working product Key questions: what does the product do? whats the launch plan?

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

Customer Development Labs recently shared a great experiment on using mTurk to interview 100 customers in 4 hours for less than $200. How to create an awesome demo video for your business – paid online course with a ton of resources. Growth Hacking for Startups by Mattan Griffel. Quora – Growth Hacks.

API 167

API Viral Startup Retention 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

The team was demoing their AJAX-powered map solution, the first of its kind, to senior management at Google. The team was demoing their AJAX-powered map solution, the first of its kind, to senior management at Google. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2018

Most importantly we now have a better idea of how to build innovation programs that will deliver products and services, not just demos. However, without any measurable milestones to show evidence of the evolution of what the team has learned about validity of the problem, customer needs, pivots, etc.,

Programming 326

Programming Incubator Leadership Silicon Valley 326

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. Other than “I’ll know it when I see it”, there’s no formal way for an investor to assess project maturity or quantify risks.

Sacramento 314

Sacramento Framework Lean Customer Development 314

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2024

I was having coffee and pastries with Justin, an ex-student, listening to him to complain over the time he wasted with a potential customer. We spent weeks integrating the sample data they gave us to build a functional prototype, and then after our demo they just ghosted us. Then came the meeting with the potential customer.

Founder 291

Founder Engineer Sales Conversion 291

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Apple is trying to push Vision Pro into their existing consumer customers All the demos and existing applications are oriented to their consumer customers Apple did not create demos for how the Vision Pro could be used in new markets where users would jump on buying a Vision Pro. So what’s the lesson for Apple?

Search 302

Search Marketing Forecast Burn Rate 302

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

Bob had taken to heart the business model canvas and Customer Development lessons. After graduating he put together a prototype and had quickly marched through Customer Discovery , iterating his product with the help of CIOs and Fortune 1000 IT departments. Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career/Culture.

Customer Development 333

Customer Development Cofounder Later Stage Software 333

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Instead you will be getting your hands dirty talking to customers, partners, competitors, as you encounter the chaos and uncertainty of how a startup actually works. Set up a booth, put up posters, run demos, etc.

Wiki 318

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 318

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2013

This was our version of Demo Day – we call it “Lessons Learned” Day. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Life Sciences , National Science Foundation , Teaching. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Life Sciences National Science Foundation Teaching' Gastro.org 2013 Education Meeting.

Lean 256

Lean Customer Development Business Model Channel 256

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

In today’s language of Customer Development , RIM positioned the Blackberry as a segment of an existing market – pager users who needed two-way communication. After a demo, if you knew what a VCR was you knew what a TiVo was. Filed under: Customer Development , Market Types. You got it. Are you cheaper?

Hockey Stick 279

Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 279

ConversionXL

MARCH 28, 2014

Also, always do qualitative research & conduct customer development interviews to help your script address as many pain points as possible. The One Page Guide To Demo Video Scripts (Simplifilm). Tools like Qualaroo & SurveyMonkey can be extremely helpful in this situation. Step 3 – Create Storyboards.

Video 122

Video Software Review Cofounder Metrics 122

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

So without further delay: Large Tech Meetups: Web Innovators Group : Quarterly Demo-Style meetup in Cambridge draws over 1000 members of the startup community each time. Lean Startup Circle Boston – Meetup dedicated to the lean startup and customer development methodology. The Grand-daddy. Coworking Spaces and Accelerators.

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. The process they use to guide their search is customer development. They would: Blog their Customer Development progress as a narrative. Weekly blog of the customer development narrative.

Silicon Valley 292

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 292

Steve Blank

AUGUST 25, 2021

And even if there had been, there was no way to turn demos into deployment with speed and at scale. This manifested itself as an organizational design problem. There was simply no permanent place in the organization for unscheduled innovation to happen. Innovation Doctrine.

Non-Compete 436

Non-Compete Government Incubator Design 436

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

A decade later, I began to teach the foundations of Lean, first at UC Berkeley (Customer Development) and then at Stanford using cases and business plans. Lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering). Let’s Teach Lean Via Experiential Learning. experiential.

Lean 436

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 436

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2013

It’s curriculum is built on a framework of business model design, customer development and agile engineering – and its emphasis on evidence, Lessons Learned versus demos, makes it the worlds most advanced accelerator. It’s success is measured not only by the technologies that leave the labs, but how many U.S.

Lean 270

Lean Washington Incubator Agile 270

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2014

This “Lessons Learned” presentation is much different than a traditional demo day. It gives us a sense of the learning, velocity and trajectory of the teams, rather than a demo day showing us how smart they are at a single point in time. BCN Biosciences.

SBIR 272

SBIR Lean Video Customer Development 272

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2017

Our mantra to the students was that we wanted them to learn about “Deployment not Demos.” Our observation is that the DOD has more technology demos than they need, but often lack deep problem understanding. Our sponsors did remind us, that at times getting a solution deployed meant that someone did have to see a demo!).

Silicon Valley 202

Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 202

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

To promote innovation inside the NGA, they’ve staffed an Enterprise Innovation Office (EIO) to coach, educate and advise the entire agency, from core leadership to the operational edges, with methods and concepts of validated learning through rapid experimentation and customer development. And the winners get to go Stage 2.

Lean 185

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 185

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

To promote innovation inside the NGA, they’ve staffed an Enterprise Innovation Office (EIO) to coach, educate and advise the entire agency, from core leadership to the operational edges, with methods and concepts of validated learning through rapid experimentation and customer development. And the winners get to go Stage 2.

Lean 185

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 185