Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

They had an existing distribution channel and their dealers and customers thought they knew who the company was and what it stood for. When I went through their financials as part of my due diligence I realized that if they ditched their low margin disk drive products, it wouldn’t take much to make them a profitable company.

Silicon Valley 170

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 170

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.

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

GoTo.com went on to ink huge distribution deals with Microsoft, AOL & Yahoo! 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. Immediately thereafter Amazon became a large business.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Go spend some time outside the building talking to potential distribution partners. Steve I have to tell you some bad news, I just showed our potential channel partners and customers a few completed pieces of the games we had. Founders need to validate their vision in front of customers early and often. Make sure they are.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 223

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Learning could be about product features, customer needs, the right pricing and distribution channel, etc.) Rather it is the simplest thing that you can show to customers to get the most learning at that point in time. They are: value proposition, product/service the company offers (along with its benefits to customers).

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

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

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.

Artificial Inteligence 156

Artificial Inteligence Founder Private Equity Ruby 156

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2016

Transportation partners play an enormous role in the supply chain as they bring products into distribution centers and sometimes directly to customers. Develop Relationships with Supply Chain Partners. Develop relationships with each of your supply chain partners and make communication a top priority.

Management 145

Management Los Angeles Forecast San Francisco 145

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

They bought distribution and engineering talent. My take was that this follows three trends: a) customer involvement in product design, b) mass customization [e.g. On the first point – think of Steven Blank’s customer development but for physical products. Twitter bough their most used iPhone client.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

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. Here the company executes a known business model (known customers, product features, competitors, pricing, distribution channel, supply chain, etc.)

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

You can be an Independent studio or do “work for hire&# (either a revenue share or buy-out model) - If you’re an independent studio you have a set of choices for distribution channel and marketing models. - We understood none of this. More detail in future posts. steve Twitted by altgate , on July 2, 2009 at 5:22 pm Said: [.]

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 15, 2013

The chart above shows age distribution within major social networks and online communities. Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Crowdsourced Workforces Rising | Xconomy – [link].

Social Media 105

Social Media Small Business Design Media 105

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

My two cents is that a business plan is the single place to collect your thinking about about your: business model, distribution channel, demand creation plan, financial assumptions, and customer and product development plan. I now think that was a mistake. I was simply confused about what a plan was for.

Business Plan 160

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 160

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Everyone should have a chance to walk the floor looking for deals, technology, distribution, customers, etc. Partnership Opportunities At any show you are attending there has to be tons of opportunity for business to business relationships you hadn’t thought about. What didn’t? Go to trade shows like it matters.

Silicon Valley 139

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 139

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

It ultimately failed because she was focused on engineering the product, but didn’t validate the rest of her business model (product/market fit, distribution channel, customer acquisition, etc.). Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

Customer Development Labs recently shared a great experiment on using mTurk to interview 100 customers in 4 hours for less than $200. Distribution Hacks. While it usually requires permission from the brand, logos instill a sense of security to users. Yong Fook’s Growth Hacking 101 Slide Deck.

API 167

API Viral Startup Retention 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2010

Critical for this transition are a CEO and executive staff who are clear-eyed pragmatists, capable of crafting and articulating a coherent mission for the company and distributing authority down to departments that are all driving toward the same goal. These new challenges require a different set of management and leadership skills.

Agile 120

Agile Development Team Review Leadership Merger 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

A business model diagram also shows how the product gets distributed to your customers and how money flows back into your company. As a founder you start out with: 1) a vision of a product with a set of features, 2) a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users?

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010

It’s the kind of thing you can repeat in an elevator, simple to understand , universally applicable , and, most importantly, doesn’t burden your tech team with a lot of custom development. Often times, that comes in the form of analytics, which is what a biz dev partner would want in order to check on the success of the deal.

Early Stage 138

Early Stage Developer Technical Review Widget 138

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

All of sudden what was an additional engineering and development effort now became a small, variable cost. As a bonus it meant the 1,400 aerial applicator companies could be a potential distribution channel partner. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Technology. Customer Development Teaching Technology'

Customer 323

Customer Algorithm Customer Development California 323

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

The key principles of customer development are: There are no facts inside the building so get the heck outside. You can test your hypotheses with a series of experiments with potential customers. Important ideas you’ll want to consider: Are potential customers beneficiaries now reachable in new ways? Which are permanent?

Customer 422

Customer Business Model Restful Video 422

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2014

Decades before we were able to articulate the value of “getting out of the building” and the Lean Startup, the value in having skunk works controlling their own distribution was starkly evident. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development. We now know how to do this.

Channel 295

Channel Customer Development Distribution Restful 295

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

In the next few posts that follow, I’ll describe more specifically how this model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Because it isn’t until after first customer ship that a startup discovers that their initial hypotheses were simply wrong (i.e.

Customer Development 245

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 245

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

I tell these stories to lay the groundwork for what I am going to call Revenue Development. We’re all familiar with Product Development, and thanks to the amazing Steve Blank and Eric Ries , Customer Development has become the mantra for so many startups. In a nutshell, Product Development is about building something.

Revenue 72

Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2010

This includes how the product gets distributed to your customers and how money flows back into your company. Distribution, Demand Creation and Partnerships. Customer Discovery. 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.

Intellectual Property 264

Intellectual Property Business Model Customer Development Distribution 264

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

If you don’t have customers, our articles on customer development and how to write compelling copy without customers can help you get started. Beyond improving headlines and images on Twitter, it’s vital to distribute content when followers are most likely to see it. This post contains video, click to play].

Acquisition 111

Acquisition Software Review PPC Analytics 111

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

For example, think of the demographic of 16 to 30-year-olds consuming content on their laptop computers and at the same time as the distribution of content is dramatically shifting. These are times when customer developments and industry changes coincide. Enter Netflix. Consider that next largest segment of the U.S.

San Diego 100

San Diego United States Technical Review Lean 100

ConversionXL

MAY 22, 2014

If you don’t have customers, our articles on customer development & writing compelling copy when you don’t have any customers , to help you to start getting people to buy. Recommended Reading: It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem.

Software Review 116

Software Review PPC Analytics Search 116

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 19, 2013

Part 4: This Will Save us Years – Customer Discovery in Medical Devices. Part 5: Value proposition and customer segments in Life Sciences. Part 6: Distribution channels in Life Sciences. Part 8: When Customers Make You Smarter –Customer Discovery in Digital Health.

Lean 258

Lean Customer Development Video Distribution 258

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

to understand distribution channel landscape, potential partners and rough cost of customer acquisition. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development. Business Model versus Business Plan Customer Development' Identify activities/resources/partners locally and then globally.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The goal was 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. Rules For the New Bubble: 2011 -2014. Tools in the New Bubble.

Internet 335

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2014

The Customer Development process, this relentless drive to turn hypotheses into facts is what makes this learning so rapid. At week six they were trying to figure out their distribution channel ( here ) after another pivot. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching.

Lean 280

Lean Silicon Valley Customer Development Incubator 280

Steve Blank

JULY 22, 2010

Customer Validation needs to have the CEO actively involved. Customer Development Diagnostics over Lunch. Do we have a workable sales and distribution channel? Filed under: Customer Development , Customer Development Manifesto. Startup CEO’s can’t delegate sales and expect it to happen.

Forecast 279

Forecast Sales Customer Customer Development 279

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

But these VC’s aren’t Lean because they fund startups with web-based distribution models. It’s because the startups are doing something very new that make them “Lean&# : These startups embrace customer and agile development that Eric Ries has been evangelizing.

Lean 265

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 265

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2013

The microcode is distributed by 1) Intel or by 2) Microsoft integrated into a BIOS or 3) as part of a Windows update. Filed under: Customer Development , Secret History of Silicon Valley. Customer Development Secret History of Silicon Valley' Since 2000, Intel has put out 29 microcode updates to their processors.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley Russia Security Customer Development 335

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

As a founder you are testing a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? What’s the distribution channel? If you are following Customer Development , the answer is easy. Filed under: Customer Development , Durant versus Sloan. Who are our partners?

Balance Sheet 307

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 307