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

APRIL 11, 2013

Examples are Hollywood for movies, Milan for fashion, New York for finance and today, Silicon Valley for technology entrepreneurship. Innofund is designed to bridge early stage technology companies that have innovative technology and good market potential but are too early for commercial funding (banks or VCs.) Venture Guiding Fund.

Programming 179

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 179

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

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. See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious. Good stuff too.

Silicon Valley 261

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 261

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

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

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 220

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 220

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards. So when he saw the browser it instantly dawned on him that this would be the greatest customer development tool ever. It’s still there 30 years later!

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

The Times Square Strategy discussion I had with Eric Ries , was still top of mind, so instead of my standard Customer Development lecture , I offered my thoughts on: the origin of Customer Development, where we are today, and where does Customer Development go, and how you can help get it there.

Customer Development 229

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 229

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

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

I distinctly remember this is the first time I head the phrases “features and benefits.&# And since I saw our ads (but didn’t quite understand them,) I knew marketing was the group that designed them, somehow to get customers to think our products were better than Intel and Motorola’s. I also knew our customers.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

A 20 th century VC was likely to have an MBA or finance background. We now understand that startups are just temporary organizations designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business models. (And the results do appear years earlier than in a traditional startup.). Third, venture capital has now become Founder-friendly.

Restful 249

Restful Silicon Valley San Jose Puerto Rico 249

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

If you never have, you can create your own using Google Finance. The vanity charts appeared, showing the changes the company had made to its strategy and the subsequent changes in customer behavior broken down by segment. All very reasonable, well designed, well argued. All very reasonable, well designed, well argued.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

The Next Web

JANUARY 27, 2013

Amazed at all the beautifully designed products that came out of only 76 hours. Especially because I could have used this time on marketing, sales and customer development, and actually helped our business move forward. I was not very happy with my life, but didn’t really know why. I found this a real waste of time and energy.

Netherlands 159

Netherlands Technical Review Software Review Cofounder 159

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes. The story had universal appeal, and we spun the tale and keep the buzz going.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule. For more on how this plays into the process of scaling up, see the Customer Creation stage of the customer development model.)

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? Here’s an attempt to put this all in context.

Search 326

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 326

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

Users were not just an extension of the testing team - they were an extension of the product design team. In the case of an entrepreneur pitching for finance, its the same fear that has them putting on a facade and not comfortable in what they do and dont know that will see them a long way off getting funded.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

There is a wealth of resources that are unique to this town and a vibrant community of hackers, product designers, business people, and investors at various stages in their career. This guide is designed to help you hit the ground running and is a starting point for your entrepreneurial journey in Boston. Ruby specialists.

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

in developing these new models. We believe that using the customer development process to monetize these assets through new business models can create huge competitive advantage and more speed to market for us and other big companies. All of their internal systems are designed to keep doing what they’ve always done best.

Lean 331

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 331

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

As an agenda for each meeting, I suggest: – How can we most add value, in addition to helping with financing? You might hire a really amazing designer, and perhaps even charge companies for their service for cost recovery purposes. Customer Development. This is an open-ended query and the most important question.).

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

By 1991, 70% of the Torch funded startups were getting bank financing for expansion and later stages of the new ventures, with local governments acting as guarantors. Being designated as a Torch Program startup gave banks comfort to provide loans to these ventures for technology commercialization. Like the U.S.

Venture Capital 279

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 279

Steve Blank

MAY 10, 2011

These diagrams are the visual representation of the how and the what a team learned in the class – how they tested their hypotheses by getting out of the building using the Customer Development process and what they learned about each part of their business model. The Lean LaunchPad was designed to fill that void.

Lean 288

Lean Business Model Agile Customer Development 288

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

a language corporate innovation groups can use to communicate to business units and finance. I use the Investment Readiness Level as part of my sessions to help the students understand that being ready for investment means that besides having a pretty PowerPoint, they need to do real work and show Customer Development progress.

Sacramento 314

Sacramento Framework Lean Customer Development 314

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

In Customer Development the goal of a minimum feature set is to pare the features of the first product release to the minimum necessary for early customers. The finance system didn’t talk to the sales system which didn’t know the manufacturing system even existed. All the Data and Not a Drop to Think.

San Francisco 230

San Francisco Database Advisory Board Silicon Valley 230

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.) There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.) In contrast, startups search for a business model. (Or

Wiki 318

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 318

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

You’ll learn more about what destroys startups, how to use the Customer Development method to succeed, how to use the Business Model Canvas, how to identify and keep your customers, and how to drive profits. Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy. B y John Mullins.

Startup 80

Startup Venture Capital Angel Investor Lean 80

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2010

Accounting Basics and Multi-stage Finance. None of the students were domain experts in their areas, and each team had to figure out how to contact potential customers and channel partners. Yet every team did figure out how to conduct extensive out of building Customer Discovery. (By Regulation and Intellectual Property.

Intellectual Property 264

Intellectual Property Business Model Customer Development Distribution 264

View from Seed

DECEMBER 8, 2015

(If you’re interested in learning more, I lay out some thoughts about this and other helpful resources for avoiding pitfalls and executing best practices for startup customer development in this post. ). The other consideration around PMF is the cost and time that will be required to really show demonstrable PMF.

Product 120

Product Startup Early Stage Seed Capital 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

Second, the leaders of these companies tended to be those who excelled at finance, supply chain or production. ARM, a competitor, not only had a better, much lower power processor, but a better business model – they licensed their architecture to other companies that designed their own products. But it’s not over for Intel.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

understand who their core and tertiary customers are, 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. identify financing vehicles before you need them.

San Diego 267

San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 267

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

By 1991, 70% of the Torch funded startups were getting bank financing for expansion and later stages of the new ventures, with local governments acting as guarantors. Being designated as a Torch Program startup gave banks comfort to provide loans to these ventures for technology commercialization. Like the U.S.

Venture Capital 171

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 171

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. You might as well bring your lucky rabbits foot to the VC meeting. Just as a refresher.

Customer Development 270

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 270

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

In 1960’s and ‘70’s few MBA’s would give up a lucrative career in management, finance or Wall Street to join a bunch of technical lunatics. In the real world a startup is about the search for a business model or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.

Engineer 313

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 313

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

I used a freelance web designer and I only created the core functions to create, send, and manage invoices. Further functions such as expense tracking, recurring invoicing, and quoting were on my development list but I waited with the implementation until I was able to prove that my customers were interested in these additions.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

So what’s wrong the product development model? The first hint lies in its name; this is a product development model, not a marketing model, not a sales hiring model, not a customer acquisition model, not even a financing model (and we’ll also find that in most cases it’s even a poor model to use to develop a product.)

Customer Development 245

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 245