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

APRIL 11, 2013

They provide consulting, promotion, product testing, hiring, training and incubation services to startups. 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.

Programming 287

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 287

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

While the last post was titled “ You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When They Offer You a Job “, this post should probably be titled, “You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When You Offer Them a Job.&# These hires were definitely not your standard marketing types.

Engineer 224

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 224

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

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 15, 2013

These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link].

Social Media 105

Social Media Small Business Design Media 105

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. And all of that cost was caused by one activity: hiring. Hiring is no different from any other company process. Sounds a little abstract, though, doesnt it?

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

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

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 145

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 145

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

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

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 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

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

APRIL 11, 2013

They provide consulting, promotion, product testing, hiring, training and incubation services to startups. 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.

Programming 179

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 179

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 8, 2009 Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and whats changed since then) My recent article on technical debt and its positive uses generated a fair bit of controversy. The argument itself got me thinking a lot about design and its role in building products.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

We hired union laborers to do that. I hired a Director of Product Marketing who in his last company had ran its marketing and then went out into the field and became its national sales director. What’s your advice about hiring sales/marketing folks? (I The same was true for the Product Marketing group.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, February 11, 2009 The free software hiring advantage This is one of those startup tips Im a little reluctant to share, because its been such a powerful source of competitive advantage in the companies Ive worked with. This approach gives you an edge in hiring. Instead, engage with the project.

Software Review 68

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The new design improved on the old one in several ways, but these improvements didnt translate all the way through the funnel. Usually, I think that means youve lost some good aspect of the old design. The designers might be telling you that the new design looks much better than the old one, and thats probably true.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

I have personally taught many “non-technical&# people to program – graphic designers, QA folks, even artists and animators. After all, if you already have an all-male startup, you’re already at a disadvantage when it comes to hiring the very women that could fix that imbalance. Thats understandable - its embarrassing!

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

The Next Web

DECEMBER 30, 2012

How to Build a Startup (EP245) by Steve Blank: You’ll learn the key steps of the Customer Development process. How to identify and engage the first customers for your product, and how to gather, evaluate and use their feedback to make your product, marketing and business model far stronger. It’s also beautifully designed.

Artificial Inteligence 156

Artificial Inteligence Founder Private Equity Ruby 156

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

When I began to hire product managers, sales reps and implementation staff from existing document management companies like Documentum and OpenText is when I got first-hand input into what lessons they had learned in their companies over the previous decade. So the whole customer development cycle is very streamlined.

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

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

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

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

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

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. Yet there is one silver lining when it does happen: we wind up throwing out working code , debt-riddled and elegantly designed alike.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Gust

APRIL 20, 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 171

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

These specs are handed to a designer, who builds layouts and mockups of all the salient points. Then the designs are handed to a team of programmers with various specialties. The programmers keep asking for more say in the designs and direction that they work on. First, he writes it nice and clear.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

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. Custom development. But establishing a website isn’t easy. WordPress DIY.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

In this business environment, hiring a new CEO who had experience growing a company around a single technical innovation was a rational decision for venture investors. Startups traditionally required millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product to customers. That’s no longer the case. We now understand that’s wrong.

Restful 249

Restful Silicon Valley San Jose Puerto Rico 249

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Next, we needed to focus our messages away from technology and onto what the customers told us they needed – performance solutions for four key publishing applications. Our company’s graphics boards were designed to speed up a key part of the Macintosh graphics operating system called QuickDraw. Very much in addition to the text.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 161

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 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

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Supercomputers get Personal Back in Sunnyvale my friend had not only been hired but had convinced the team that we should be building hardware – making a new class of computers not a software application. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. We’re building a supercomputer.” Blog at WordPress.com.

North Carolina 133

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 133

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and what. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. What is customer development?

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 30, 2008 Refactoring for TDD and interaction design In TDD , we follow a rhythm of “test-code-refactor.&# This basic pattern is useful in all aspects of product development. The same process works in Interaction Design. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Software Review 74

Software Review San Francisco Design Continuous Deployment 74