Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2013

He gave my innovation team free reign on designing a new employee innovation program. The design challenge. Our challenge was to design a program that could: Teach participants on how to turn their ideas into fundable experiments. His only request was that we keep two of the original program’s goals: 1. What went right?

Programming 301

Programming Design Lean Seed Money 301

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2013

He gave my innovation team free reign on designing a new employee innovation program. The design challenge. Our challenge was to design a program that could: Teach participants on how to turn their ideas into fundable experiments. His only request was that we keep two of the original program’s goals: 1. What went right?

Programming 293

Programming Design Lean Seed Money 293

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. You can imagine how well that worked. On the minus side, that has made it a wee bit hard to understand.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

While our teams have mentors, socialize a lot and give great demos, the goal of our class final presentations is “ Lessons Learned ” – about product/market fit, pricing, acquisition/activation costs, pricing, partners, etc. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching.

Lean 322

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 322

Steve Blank

AUGUST 21, 2013

It was whether after meeting with partners and regulators, they had a plan to deal with the intensifying regulatory environment. It was whether after talking to manufacturing partners and clinicians, they understood how they were going to reduce technology risk. gather data essential to customer purchases before doing the science.

SBIR 321

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 321

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. Customer Segments change over time. I-Corps @ NIH Lecture Order Details.

Intellectual Property 290

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 290

Steve Blank

JUNE 19, 2014

We assumed that for commercial hypotheses (clinical utility, who the customer is, data and quality of data, how reimbursement works, what parts of the product are valuable, roles of partners, etc.) The key members of the team CEO, CTO, Principal investigator, need to be actively engaged talking to customers, partners, regulators, etc.

Lean 277

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development 277

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

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

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

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

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

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Oh, and we had no installed customer base. I had hired the VP of marketing from a potential software partner who was responsible to get all this 3 rd party software on our computer. I’ve been on the side of your potential partners, and I know that often too much ‘persistence’ is offputting.

Silicon Valley 332

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 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. It’s just a story about what happened to me. Are These Your Slides? He said, “Look again.”

Silicon Valley 261

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 261

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Meanwhile my partner was in heaven working with his newly hired group of game designers directing and producing our first games. No, not really, but my partner owns the studio and tells me it’s spectacular and everyone will love it. Go spend some time outside the building talking to potential distribution partners.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 223

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

I pointed out that the “data” you gather in 10 weeks (talking to 100+ customers, partners, payers, etc.,) 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? ——– 1.

Cofounder 330

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 330

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Since NewTV won’t be making the content, they will be licensing from and partnering with traditional entertainment producers. NewTV will depend on partners like telcos to distribute the content. Lean was designed to inform the founders’ vision while they operated frugally at speed. Every startup is in a race against time.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

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.&# Reply One difference between VCs and Entrepreneurs « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog , on April 20, 2009 at 7:06 am Said: [.]

Silicon Valley 309

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 309

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. 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.

CTO Hire 252

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 252

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 6, 2014

These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! How to Design a Billion Dollar Company – crowdspring.co/RXZyBZ. How Greylock Partners Finds the Next Facebook – crowdspring.co/Ud9VE5. – crowdspring.co/T7KSBE.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Software Review 94

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Each VC firm/partner has a different spin on what to weigh more.) These types seem dangerous, yet are often the ones needed on board to get the fund to invest in the first place, seeing that the younger partners naturally have less pull during the Monday round-ups. I find the same still going on with a few firms and partners.&#

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. 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.

CTO Hire 244

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. 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.

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

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

JUNE 15, 2009

And one would become my mentor and partner in later companies.) Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Tips for Startups « Am I a Founder? My daughter, now 14, has her own company, doing web design and PHP and CSS and who knows what else.

Entrepreneur 295

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS 295

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

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Yet two smart VC firms, Sigma and Matrix Partners, realized that somewhere in this mess there was value. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. And with all of that they had gone broke, out of business and into Chapter 11. Their guess was that they would find value in the high margin graphics business. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 170

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 170

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. Your product is designed with natural tripwires to trigger other pricing ( Freemium model ), or not (business model left as an exercise to your future self). Price is not an afterthought, it is essential business design.

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

New strategic direction in companies with loyal customers have different consequences then when you had no customers Acquiring new customers are a lot more expensive that converting existing ones. 5) The customer’s needs don’t match your long term direction. Fire might be a strong word.

Customer 218

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 218

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Since there was very little documentation my time was split between the design engineers who built the system and the test and deployment team getting the system ready to go overseas. No one will say work less and go home and spend time with your partner and/or family. No one will say that it’s time to move on.

Agile 269

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 269

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

The key things I want students to take from the class are: Understand that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a profitable business model. Having a teaching partner makes life a lot easier and the class improves. After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner.

Business Model 236

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 236

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

In fact, their affiliate partners dissuaded them from doing so. Quirky - Platform facilitating collaborative design of consumer products through an online community. My take was that this follows three trends: a) customer involvement in product design, b) mass customization [e.g. OTHER STUFF.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

But I pointed out that he would be up against competitors that had spend years building relationships with the big financial services companies (as well as channel partners) and he was going to have to start from scratch. The exact same team had worked on 2 previous customer service startups (and 1 non-CS product).

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

The Equity Kicker

SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

Two developments have changed the face of startup investing in the UK in recent years. The first development is increased capital efficiency. Forward Partners and Crowdcube are both attacking elements of these problems. Entrepreneurs can now achieve an awful lot with very little money.

Early Stage 119

Early Stage Development Team Review Technical Review Software Review 119

The Next Web

JUNE 8, 2014

Yoav Leitersdorf and Ofer Schreiber of are partners at YL Ventures. Developing an enterprise-grade SaaS product is not easy. The keys are maintaining capital efficiency, launching early versions to the SMB market and constantly applying customer development methods. Design & Dev Entrepreneur Analysis and Opinion'

B2C 132

B2C B2B IP Technical Review 132

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. 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.

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

Secondly, they had an owned & operated (O&O) website – Google.com – and Overture had shut down GoTo.com at the request of their very profitable and large distribution partners. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350