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

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

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

My first company launched in 1999 and we were offering a SaaS document management in the cloud (we were called ASPs back then). I didn’t have first-hand experience in document management systems other than as a user and nobody had SaaS experience – the market was too new. I’ll always point out when I am.).

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

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 9, 2009

competitive analyses, channel and customer collateral (white papers, data sheets, product reviews), customer surveys, and market requirements documents. We will accomplish this through demand-creation activities (advertising, PR, tradeshows, seminars, web sites, etc.), on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

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. Along the way we were fortunate to meet Steve, develop strategic partnerships, and raise a series A round of investment. So how did Customer Development fail us?

Customer Development 231

Customer Development Developer Customer California 231

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2019

Having the teams build incremental and iterative MVPs was more important than obsessing about early documentation/reporting. Allow teams to pivot to what they learned in customer discovery rather than blindly follow a plan they sold you on day one. However, the process and reports were still essential to management above him.

Agile 65

Agile Lean Leadership Conversion 65

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

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 255

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Instead of detailed documents, we focused on tracking our performance to our plan and managing to regularly updated schedules and milestones. Osterwalder defined a template called a Business Model Canvas, for documenting business models. The Lean Planning methodology starts with a documenting your hypothesis with a pitch.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Founders assumed they understood customer problems/needs, wrote engineering requirements documents, designed the product, implemented /built the hardware/software, verified that it worked by testing it, and then introduced the product to customers in a formal coming out called first customer ship.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 16, 2013

On Customer Development in a growing company, Wyatt offered the following advice: Wyatt: We''ve employed a number of systems in the organization that keep all of us close to the customer. There are 5-10 customers in our office (or remote) per week for developers, product owners and marketers to speak to and validate learning.

Lean 167

Lean Startup Software Engineering Agile 167

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.) A series of new business cases documenting Lean Startup principles in a variety of companies. I also frequently see the reverse.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

It made me re-think some of the fundamentals of what we were doing and make a few more user/customer meetings on one of our next releases. We did need the full written document for the PPM for our investors, early on. bplan document is just that. Funny, but with their feedback, we changed several parts of the product.

Business Plan 160

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 160

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

There are a whole range of valid reasons why non-developers would want to dictate the production release schedule (Seasonal/timing issues, marketing, fulfillment concerns, documentation/training, revenue controls, legal/regulatory. It lets the customer and development team spot problems with calculations almost immediately.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 13, 2011

Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology detailed in his book, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany." steve blank in finland sept 2011 View more documents from steve blank. 9-to-5 Venture Capital.

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Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 158

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 9, 2013

Call the client and talk him through the documents in real time so he can ask questions and you can correct misconceptions. Professionalisms customer development customer relationship management customer service managing customers Tom Panaggio' But don’t include a long, convoluted explanation in the email.

Customer 170

Customer Technical Review Florida Cofounder 170

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

But according to the theory, this should have been covered by the various specs and documentation we were rigorous about producing. Because the art team was considered an internal customer (and “friendly&# to boot), we didn’t waste a lot of time making the tools easy to use. This led to some pretty bizarre situations.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

These don’t require coding skills—they’re usually visual templates that are easy to use but don’t allow for great customization (that would require technical skills). Custom development. This means hiring/contracting a freelance web developer or an agency to design and develop your site from start to finish.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Each five whys email is a teaching document. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? And youll start to see people from all over the company chime in with interesting suggestions for how you could make things better.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

How about documentation that nobody reads? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Reports that go unnoticed?

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

The Next Web

JANUARY 27, 2013

With our first clients, we needed legal documents again to describe terms and conditions. So far, they’ve passed the legal department of our customers without any problems. Especially because I could have used this time on marketing, sales and customer development, and actually helped our business move forward.

Netherlands 159

Netherlands Technical Review Software Review Cofounder 159

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

They take things like unit testing, design documents and code reviews more seriously than any other company Ive even heard about. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? ScienceDaily: Corporate culture is most important.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

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 ? And when do business planning and execution come into play?

Search 326

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 326

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

In fact, every single lean transformation documented in books like Lean Thinking took place in the midst of serious external threats. Customer Development : a disciplined approach to finding out if there is a market for your product before its too late. The hardest costs to cut are those that are embodied in sacred cows.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

What you’re holding in your hand is a revolutionary document. A smaller number of companies have become proficient at the next step— incubation —rigorously testing new business concepts, using the lean start-up methods of Customer Development, Agile Engineering, and Business Model design. Here it is in its entirety.

Incubator 419

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 419

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

That data is completely consonant with the people I know who are successful technologists today, and similar patterns are documented in each recent wave of technology innovation. I documented the lesson plans etc on [link] March 4, 2009 5:25 AM Eric said. I offered a programming class at the local school and. only two kids took it up!

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 2, 2010

They’re an albatross if they perform as they do in a large company, and believe that they “own&# customer interaction, feedback to engineering and authoring market requirements documents. In a startup they will be part of the Customer Development team. Filed under: Customer Development.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley Management San Francisco Product 267

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Recall that the biggest source of waste in product development is building something nobody wants. I’ve previously documented that early-on in IMVU’s life, we made the mistake of building an IM add-on product instead of a standalone network. and for which customer? and for which customer? Let me illustrate.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

The business plan is a wonderful document for organizing and planning for existing companies to launch follow-on products. In an existing corporation, the business plan is the execution document for sustaining innovation. Business Plan vs. Business Model + Customer Development. It what winners do.

Business Model 270

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 270

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 19, 2012

This should be an iterative process with advisors and customers providing feedback on the product. Conversations with a technical advisors or possible developers should be iterative. You might also have a business plan, marketing plan, financials, competitor analysis or other kinds of background document. That's fairly uncommon.

Developer 354

Developer Technical Review Fractional CTO Software Review 354

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. These three tools allow startups to focus on the parts of an early stage venture that matter the most: the product, product/market fit, customer acquisition, revenue and cost model, channels and partners.

Oakland 330

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 330

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2014

Launched by Robert Adams in 1989, this $30 million fund grew to over $200 million in the next 7 years, as it launched companies like Documentum and Document Sciences out of Xerox’s fabled Palo Alto Research Center. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development.

Startup 331

Startup Business Model Lean Russia 331

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2009

Slides are below: The Lean Startup fbFund Edition View more documents from Eric Ries. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Edit: I finally got YouTube upload working, which has better embedding options than MobileMe. If you want to see the original video, use the link above.

Lean 115

Lean Video San Francisco Continuous Deployment 115

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 16, 2012

Do you and your client trust each other to do things without extensive documentation, checks, and controls? It doesn’t make sense to meet,’ that’s still a bad sign. It means they don’t really value your ongoing insight and perspective. Trust is the essential foundation of every long-term relationship.

Management 159

Management Partner Channel Demand 159

Steve Blank

MARCH 14, 2012

Curriculum = business model canvas + customer development. Relentless customer visits (10-20 a week). On-line journal to document their customer discovery narrative. Weekly critiques of team customer discovery progress. Students apply as preformed teams. Minimal lecture, maximum experiential immersion.

Lean 254

Lean Business Model China Customer Development 254