Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Over the years Dino and I brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. The cloud , open-source development tools and web 2.0 This was valuable to startups in the Valley and has been vital to startups in regions where the ecosystem is less developed.

Early Stage 295

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 295

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2010

One of the principles of Customer Development is to get out of the building and understand the smallest feature-set customers will pay for in the first release.). I can’t get more than one of ten potential customers to think that this is something they’d buy.” Why A Minimum Feature Set? Steve, you’re wrong.

Customer Development 313

Customer Development Business Model Developer Search 313

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. They needed to be sure that what they were building was what customers wanted and needed. Some have labeled this period as irrational exuberance. The result?

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

HR processes, legal processes, financial processes, acquisition and contracting processes, security processes, product development and management processes, and types of organizational forms etc. Metrics are used to manage process rather than creation of new capabilities, outcomes and speed to deployment. are obstacles for innovation.

Government 322

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 322

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2012

When Bob Dorf and I wrote the Startup Owners Manual we listed a series of Customer Development principles. Pair Customer Development with Agile Development. No Business Plan Survives First Contact with Customers. Startup Metrics are Different from Existing Companies. Not All Startups Are Alike.

Customer Development 331

Customer Development Developer Customer Cofounder 331

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Founders that learn are more successful : Startups that have helpful mentors, track metrics effectively, and learn from startup thought leaders raise 7x more money and have 3.5x Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. Startup Genome Report. Some of their key findings : 1. better user growth.

Technical Cofounder 335

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 335

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development? The core idea behind customer development is that the assumptions you make about a target market are only guesses. Website Analysis.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Venture Capitalists on your board developed the expertise to get your firm public as soon as possible using whatever it took including hype, spin, expand, and grab market share because the sooner you got your billion dollar market cap, the sooner the VC firm could sell their shares and distribute their profits. Warning sign? At best. ~

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And the results weren’t the traditional PR metrics of number of articles or inches of ink. We were constantly creating metrics to see the effects of different PR messages, channels and audiences on end-user purchases. It wasn’t measured by how busy you were, it was measured by results. I couldn’t care less about those.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

And the whole site was developed in just 9 weeks. Cory Nelson will talk with Eric about how GE has applied the MVP method to its development of very large diesel engines. Hugh Molotsi , an accomplished innovator at Intuit , will talk about recognizing good ideas in big organizations.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

> Uber's " Reality Therapy 4 Startups": What U Need 2 Know NOW > Steve Blank on why NOT to be an Entrepreneur > Airbnb's Globetrotting Lessons: Building 4 a Global Market > Vinod Khosla - The VC Legend: Interview w/ Dave McClure > Eric Ries on Entrepreneurship: What He's Learned Along the Way > GitHub's Secret 2 Success: Rethinking (..)

Lean 165

Lean Cofounder Startup Software Engineering 165

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. Such direct experiences allows one to test critical “leap-of-faith” assumptions about what customers like and dislike.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. We were lucky to learn about Customer Development early on in the life of our startup. More importantly, we’d witnessed Customer Development’s massive success at another local startup. So how did Customer Development fail us?

Customer Development 231

Customer Development Developer Customer California 231

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Metrics – Mine is Bigger Than Yours The first thing SuperMac needed to do was to change how our potential color desktop publishing customers viewed our products versus our competitors’ products. As hokey as it is, when confronted with uncertainty or unknowns, human beings like to be reassured by comparative metrics.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 128

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 11, 2016

Through that process, I lost a lot including some relationships with individuals, and I started to develop symptoms of acute anxiety. . We did three iterations of the product in less than 12 months, each one progressively going off of different consumer metrics that we found and then partner feedback. Tune in Thursday, Oct.

Columbus 249

Columbus Entrepreneur Cofounder Ohio 249

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Guide to Evaluating Startup Ideas - Tony Wright dot com , May 27, 2010 A great developer I once worked with was kvetching at lunch one day. They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. it’s about measuring online influence and I’m big on metrics as a key element of business planning; 2.) Innovative. Disruptive.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 16, 2013

We work in prototypically four-week iterations, with quality engineers and software developers working in close collaboration. During this period, the Palantir Gotham team grew from five developers to around 35. But we couldn''t have identified this without having clear metrics (that high bug count) to assess our development process.

Lean 167

Lean Startup Software Engineering Agile 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

When we looked at the color graphics board market, our competitors had defined the market as one measured by technical metrics: screen resolution, number of bits of color, screen refresh rates, acceleration, etc. It didn’t take much imagination to realize that what we had to do was to tell our story around one key metric performance ?

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 161

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. As a result, the standard product development model is not only useless, it is dangerous.

Customer Development 222

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 222

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Instead of encouraging entrepreneurs to focus on developing long and in-depth, static business plans, Tim advocated for a simpler approach: Define your business identity: What’s your value proposition to your customers? Determine your target market: You need to know and understand your customers.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

If you’re looking to dive deep on Lean Startup skills, our workshop sessions provide professional development at a serious bargain. In this workshop, Goto will take you through the application development process and shre behind-the-scenes techniques for rapid prototyping. We’ll talk about the cool site visits in a separate post.)

Lean 154

Lean Cofounder Startup Analytics 154

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

1) It all starts from the Growth Hacking Funnel - in the early stages, startups should not just focus on top/bottom line metric like unique users and revenue. Customer Development Labs recently shared a great experiment on using mTurk to interview 100 customers in 4 hours for less than $200. Which one is the most stable?

Viral 167

Viral API Startup Retention 167

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in Customer Development. It’s one of the subtle distinctions that at times gets lost in the process.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 146

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

The reason is that b2b fundraising is largely driven by data and metrics, and pre-seed dollars usually don’t get you to many meaningful data points. Unlike in B2B, you don’t necessarily want to use a second-seed round to get to metrics that every investor will appreciate. Experienced founders: B2B. Experienced founders: Consumer.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. Starting in the 1950’s, Stanford’s engineering department became “outward facing” and developed a culture of spinouts and active faculty support and participation in the first wave of Silicon Valley startups. Seeing Is Believing. The Business Plan is Dead.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

The products you develop in the bowling alley are there to carry your technology and get it adopted. Reply conversationalistOU812 , on November 9, 2009 at 10:31 am Said: Dmitriy is right – we should ban the use of industry buzzwords like “verticals&# , “metrics&# and “horizontals&# altogether.

Vertical 159

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 159

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

One of them used to be a lead developer at [insert hot consumer tech company here]. Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited. No updates, screen comps, or metrics have been publicly shared yet. Soundbites from potential customers are encouraging.

Burn Rate 153

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 153

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

Gore , I’ve found two corporate strategy tools developed by other smart people helpful in bridging Lean Startups with Corporate Innovation. To move innovation faster, we now have 21 st century tools — Business Model Canvas , Customer Development , Agile Engineering – all adding up to a Lean Startup. Get to Yes.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

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

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2009

Gathering real-world feedback from customers is a core concept of Customer Development as well as the Lean Startup. When I asked him if he actually had personally left the building and talked to these potential customers, or even had gotten them on the phone, he sounded confused. Posted in Customer Development Manifesto.

Metrics 243

Metrics Customer Customer Development Lean 243

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

And the final lesson was that we were keeping score on our packaging with the wrong metrics – it wasn’t about awards, it was about sales in the retail channel. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.)

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

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. And we can offer investors metrics to play Moneyball – with the Investment Readiness Level. We think we can do better. Here’s how.

Oakland 330

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 330

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2014

Kauffman just launched Founders School - a new education series to help entrepreneurs develop their businesses during the startup stage by highlighting how startups are different from big companies. 2:21: Accounting Metrics in a Large Company vs. Metrics that Matter in a Startup. 0:41: Don’t outsource Customer Discovery.

Founder 331

Founder Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 331

ConversionXL

JANUARY 31, 2014

note: If you’re a startup, you’ll want to use customer development questions for your page to resonate with future traffic). Ask Peep about analytics, and he’ll tell you, “Metrics are there to provide actionable insight. You need to look at a metric, ask “so what?” – and have an answer.”. image source.

Analytics 134

Analytics Video Matching Conversion 134

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2013

You cannot draw a direct line to reducing waste or improving revenues or cutting costs…whereas the cross-functional teams, you can tie it to a performance metric that has a direct result in the corporate objectives. You have to go find your own customers to experiment with, you have your own brand, so you have to think like a Lean Startup.

Lean 167

Lean Silicon Valley Agile Cofounder 167

The Next Web

MARCH 11, 2014

For the past year, they invested in the team and technology to prioritize speed of iteration with disregard to traditional methods of customer development and company building. Their pitch was unpolished, product vision unclear, they had little understanding of their metrics, and traction didn’t stand out from competitors.

Silicon Valley 151

Silicon Valley Cofounder Stock Options Mobile 151

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

If you are following Customer Development , the answer is easy. Board meetings are about measuring progress measured against the hypotheses in Customer Discovery and Validation. Do the metrics show that the business model you’re creating will support the company you’re trying to become? Startup Metrics.

Balance Sheet 307

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 307