Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

We think teaching teams a formal methodology around the Lean Framework (Business Model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) is a natural evolution of how successful incubators/accelerators will build startups. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching.

Lean 322

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 322

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. And you’ll learn about how to build a minimal viable product to get feedback early and often from customers.

Startup 335

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2012

Long before there was the Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or Customer Development there was a guy in Santa Barbara California who had already figured it out. I want to tell you a story about how a team pivoted and succeeded by synchronizing product and customer development. Filed under: Customer Development.

San Jose 261

San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 261

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. Now everyone can do design,” was the mantra. George Bernard Shaw. Not everyone is an artist.

Agile 334

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 334

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

I returned to the Air Force Academy as an instructor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, intent on spreading the gospel of Customer Development and Lean. They shared our enthusiasm about the impact it could have on our future design projects and how it might bring a change in perspective to our acquisition corps.

Lean 271

Lean Technical Review Acquisition Software Review 271

Steve Blank

AUGUST 21, 2013

We’re going to help teams: assess regulatory risk before they design and build. gather data essential to customer purchases before doing the science. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Science and Industrial Policy , Teaching. define clinical utility now, before spending millions of dollars.

SBIR 321

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 321

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 287

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 287

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

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

The Customer Development process is the way startups quickly iterate and test each element of their business model , reducing customer and market risk. The first step of Customer Development is called Customer Discovery. outside the building and test them in front of customers.

Burn Rate 252

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 252

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 307

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 307

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

In both cases, the answer was that the founder would go to find other ideas, turn those into paper descriptions and validate it with customers. Customer Validation 101. The Fallacy of Customer Development Hubris Versus Humility: The $15 billion Difference Less is More, More or Less Yes, but who said they’d actually BUY the damn thing?

Customer 227

Customer Fractional CTO Viral Lean 227

Steve Blank

JUNE 19, 2014

understand the core customers and the sales and marketing process required for initial clinical sales and downstream commercialization. assess intellectual property and regulatory risk before they design and build. gather data essential to customer partnerships/collaboration/purchases before doing the science.

Lean 277

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development 277

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

Business plan competitions perpetuate everything that is wrong about trying to make plans that were designed to be used in large companies fit startups. Filed under: Customer Development Manifesto , Durant versus Sloan: Startups Verus Companies , Teaching. Some school will be first to hold a contest that rewards what matters.

Business Plan 320

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 320

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

To fill this gap I wrote The Four Steps to the Epiphany , a book about the Customer Development process and how it changes the way startups are built. ” It defined a startup as a “temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.”

Technical Review 223

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 223

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2012

Wrote technical manuals and taught microprocessor design (to customers who knew more than I did.) Worked weeks non-stop responding to customer Requests For Proposals (RFP’s.) Designed tradeshow booths, spent long nights at shows setting them up, and long days inside them during the shows.

Thailand 334

Thailand Engineer Customer Development SEO 334

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2014

We didn’t know it at the time, but with that investment we had paid for front-row VIP seats to witness the origins of Customer Development and the Lean Startup. They spend the year working with the doctors and the life sciences venture community to design devices and other solutions to those problems and needs.

Maryland 280

Maryland Lean DC Virginia 280

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. This methodology forces rapid hypothesis testing and Customer Development by getting out of the building while building the product. And since the rest of the slides were about Customer Development, I taught those.

Incubator 310

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 310

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 286

Lean Customer Development Business Model Email 286

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

(Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.) This startup search process is the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. The 47th (-46) Annual Business Model Competition.

Business Model 285

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 285

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

However, there’s a growing belief that the “design preferences” of Chinese consumers are just bad design. TenCents WeChat , (designed for an international market) is the first incredibly popular app in China to dramatically raise the bar for what a good user interface and user experience looks and feels like.

China 328

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 328

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

We spent time out in the marketplace talking with customers, looking at their solutions, comparing ourselves with our competition and then squirreling ourselves away in our offices designing our next set of features. I used to always tell my development team, “you need to design a product that my dad could use.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

In previous posts I’ve talked about what the combination of Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Methodologies mean to startups and intrapreneurs in large companies; it’s the beginning of entrepreneurship as a science with its own rules and methodologies. She posted her notes from the talk here.)

Customer Development 278

Customer Development Business Model Developer Design 278

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. We’ve pivoted our Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum.

Intellectual Property 290

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 290

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

We hired a PhD in computational fluid dynamics from Duke who had worked on helicopter design. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. At the time this was a pretty controversial decision. These hires were definitely not your standard marketing types. Years later he would become a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital.)

Engineer 224

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 224

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.&# Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. In a startup it doesn’t matter if you’re 100% right 100% of the time. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 309

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 309

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Steve Blank , January 25, 2010 10 Tips for Adding Game Mechanics to a Non-Gaming Service - ReadWriteStart , September 21, 2010 Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, & Eat Your Own. - First Principles.

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2010

It’s the combination of Business Model Design and Customer Development. Business Model Design. Business Model Design Gets Dynamic, Customer Development Gets Strategic. One of the key tenets of Customer Development is that your business model is nothing more than a set of untested hypotheses.

Customer Development 332

Customer Development Business Model Developer Customer 332

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. See part one for the first time it happened.

Silicon Valley 261

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 261

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Here are just a few things you might look for: Reducing risk in young companies Bringing innovation to the enterprise Designing and running experiments Customer development strategies All conference passes are on sale right now, and you can compare them here.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

I was hired as a training instructor to teach microprocessor system design for the existing Z-80 family and to write a new course for Zilog’s soon to be launched 16-bit processor, the Z-8000. So our people in the field could correct any egregious design advice I gave to customers who mattered. You created it and own it.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 206

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

Now that you’ve gotten to know your potential channel and customers, regardless of how much money you’re going to make, will you enjoy working with these customers for the next 3 or 4 years? It was a lifelong lesson that taught me to never start a business where you hate your customers. It never goes well.

Cofounder 330

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 330

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Venture Capital | Tagged: Entrepreneurs « Customer Development Manifesto: Market Type (part 4) Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) » 16 Responses Jon Ziskind , on September 14, 2009 at 9:19 am Said: Steve – Great post and really great advice.

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

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 179

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 179

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM), now largely replaced by Facebook and Twitter.

CTO Hire 252

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 252

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM), now largely replaced by Facebook and Twitter.

CTO Hire 244

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM), now largely replaced by Facebook and Twitter.

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

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