Customer Development, Entrepreneur and Metrics

Customer Development is Not a Focus Group

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

Customer Development

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley

The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development

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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide is an easy read. You can imagine how well that worked. I think theyve succeeded.

Customer Development

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer

Lessons Learned: What is customer development?

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way. Heres the catch.

Customer Development

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer

Lessons Learned: Customer Development Engineering

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Its a nice complement on the product engineering side to his customer development methodology.

Customer Development

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer

Why vanity metrics are dangerous

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Why vanity metrics are dangerous In a previous post, I defined two kinds of metrics: vanity metrics and actionable metrics. In this post, Id like to talk about the perils of vanity metrics. My personal favorite vanity metrics is "hits."

Metrics

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: Combining agile development with customer development

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. In most agile development systems, there is a notion of the "product backlog" a prioritized list of what software is most valuable to be developed next.

Agile

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco

Early-stage Regional Venture Funds–part 2 of 3 of Bigger in Bend

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Part 1: Bend, Oregon Ecosystem and Entrepreneurs. Success depends on finding startups that have identified acute customer pains in large markets where conditions are ripe for a new entrant. Few entrepreneurs find this scalable and repeatable business model because it’s not easy. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds.

Early Stage

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review

Reinventing Life Science Startups – Evidence-based Entrepreneurship

Steve Blank

AUGUST 21, 2013

Obviously there’s lots of bias built into the data – those who volunteered might be the better teams, the peer reviewers might be selecting for what we taught, funding is no metric for successful science let alone successful companies, etc. – but the difference in funding success is over 300%. – See more here.

SBIR

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup

Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out – The Startup Genome Project

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

A big piece of the solution lies in the scalable impact of entrepreneurship and an increase of successful entrepreneurs. Max continued, “That’s why I’m really interested in ways of optimizing the entrepreneurship ecosystem to allow more entrepreneurs to go from idea to reality. I was feeling pretty old.

Technical Cofounder

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley

Can You Trust Any vc's Under 40?

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. There’s lots of lore, emotion, and misconceptions of what VC’s do or don’t do for entrepreneurs. In this time, building a successful business meant building a company that had paying customers quarter after quarter.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital

Lessons Learned: The lean startup

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

So far, I have found "lean startup" works better with the entrepreneurs Ive talked to than "agile startup" or even "extreme startup.") The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

Lean

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment

[Review] The Lean Startup

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Enter “ The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses “, a New York Times bestseller by founder of IMVU (creator of 3D avatars) Eric Ries. Not doing so would end up in wasteful innovations and features that customers do not want.

Lean

Lean Technical Review North America Startup

The Lean Startup SXSW 2013

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

Luckily, in a room full of entrepreneurs, plenty of new businesses popped up to bring people food and water. (If That's because the room we were in was so packed, the only way to stay for the next session was to refuse to give up your seat. 1,000 startup founders, investors, and press! Nicole Lazzaro President Udi Nir CTO NEW! >

Lean

Lean Cofounder Startup Software Engineering

See More than 120 Speakers and Mentors at The Lean Startup Conference

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Experienced entrepreneurs We’ve got speakers who are justifiably respected by a lot of entrepreneurs. Another way to learn more about who’s speaking is to sort the conference program by category and find people addressing specific topics. For example: Mitch Kapor was a founder of Lotus.

Lean

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE

Lessons Learned: The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Focus on the output metrics of that part of the product, and you make the problem a lot more clear. I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. Labels: customer development , split-test 7comments: Editor said.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment

SuperMac War Story 6: Building The Killer Team – Mission, Intent.

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

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR

Minimum Viable Product: a guide

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

In a lot of cases, this requires a lot of energy invested in talking to customers or metrics and analytics. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: The metrics and levers of engagement.

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. What good are these metrics if they dont help guide product or business decisions?

Metrics

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral

Lessons Learned: Using AdWords to assess demand for your new.

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

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Harvard Business.

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, January 15, 2010 Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Harvard Business Review) The next part in the series I am writing for Harvard Business Review is online. This time, Im discussing the challenge for corporate CFOs and VCs alike in holding entrepreneurs accountable. Read the rest here.

Hockey Stick

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean

Lessons Learned: Five Whys

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Because five whys kept turning up a few key metrics that were hard to set static thresholds for, we even had a dynamic prediction algorithm that would make forecasts based on past data, and fire alerts if the metric ever went out of its normal bounds. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. One last comment.

Software Review

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment

Introducing Lean Planning: How to plan less and grow faster

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Lean Planning started with Tim Berry ‘s 2008 “ Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan ” which was a new way for entrepreneurs to think about planning. Also, the “customer relationships” section didn’t seem to fit for many traditional businesses. Does the solution the entrepreneur is proposing actually solve the problem?

Lean

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review

SuperMac War Story 4: Repositioning SuperMac – “Market Type” at.

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

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California

How Customer Development Failed Us

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

One of the attributes of great entrepreneurs is that they are tenacious and relentless. Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. Here’s our story: We started like most entrepreneurs — an idea, an opportunity, and very little money.

Customer Development

Customer Development Developer Customer California

Lessons Learned: About the author

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. my startup is Blank Label (www.blank-label.com), which is a provider of custom dress shirts that empowers consumers to become the designer of their own product.

San Francisco

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO

A full day of Lean Startup Workshops on December 4, 2012

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

You’ll learn how to conduct the right kind of customer interviews, prioritize high-risk assumptions, design experiments, and measure the effectiveness of your product (not your marketing). The Lean Entrepreneur: Embrace the Unknown to Go Big with Patrick Vlaskovits and Brant Cooper.

Lean

Lean Cofounder Startup Analytics

Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem)

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

At least, not in the traditional sense of trying to squeeze every tenth of a point out of a conversion metric or landing page. Instead, we try to accelerate with respect to validated learning about customers. Even if it shows improvement in some micro metric, does that invalidate the overall design? No one feature is to blame.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design

Lessons Learned: Built to learn

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience. Creating a company-wide feedback loop that incorporates both customer development and agile development is a challenge.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile

Lessons Learned: What does a startup CTO actually do?

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

CTO

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review

Lessons Learned: The product manager's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco

San Francisco Management Software Review Product

Why we need to teach MBA’s about modern entrepreneurship (and what Harvard Business School is doing about it)

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

One of my beliefs is that such a theory should be addressed to entrepreneurs and the people who hold them accountable. It’s this latter criteria that I think tends to get overlooked in most writing about entrepreneurs. Who holds entrepreneurs accountable? I also frequently see the reverse. Are we making progress?

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers

Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. I have counseled innumerable entrepreneurs to change their focus to revenue, and many companies who refuse this advice get themselves into trouble by running out of iterations. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal.

Customer

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick

Speed up or slow down? (for Harvard Business Review)

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Labels: product development Speed up or slow down? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much?

Software Review

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Create Structure out of the Gate and You’ll Thank Yourself Later

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Ari Newman is an entrepreneur, mentor, investor, and a friend. He works at Techstars where his responsibility is to ensure that the connections between alumni, mentors, and staff are as robust as they can be – helping entrepreneurs “ do more faster ” day in and day out. Three months in, the burn is now at $70k/month.

Burn Rate

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage

Lessons Learned: SEM on five dollars a day

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Those rates gave us a map that told us a lot about our customers; insights that proved stable even when the company grew orders of magnitude bigger. Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

SEM

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond"

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

Agile

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment

The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business Review)

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ▼ June (3) What is a startup?

Technical Review

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Vertical Markets 1: Bad Advice – All Startups are the Same « Steve.

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Verticals Are Different I began to realize that entrepreneurs (and their professors) act like every vertical market and industry has the same set of rules. Entrepreneurs who have experience in the vertical market they’re entering do this analysis automatically. Just for discussion, the markets I chose were: Web 2.0,

Vertical

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS

Building a new startup hub

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

But theres no denying the level of support for entrepreneurs that we enjoy. They take common stock, not preferred, a fact that the entrepreneurs mentioned to me many times. And every year, it looks as if one or two entrepreneurs from the program decide to stay. And do your customer development.

San Francisco

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean

Lessons Learned: Principles of Lean Startups, presentation for.

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. For customer development, start with Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany or take a look at his recent Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lecture.

Lean

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: Work in small batches

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review

Lessons Learned: Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

gmlk, what would it take for you to recommend this blog to an entrepreneur who was a friend of yours? Eric: It would take that I have friends which are entrepreneurs. In the Netherlands being a entrepreneur very unusual. My background isnt metrics, but we came to it as a matter of practicality. Eric, great blog.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

Lessons Learned: Just-In-Time Scalability

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean

Thank you

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. We were colleagues briefly at KPCB, where Randy has been working not just with individual companies, but also working to change the mindset of entrepreneurs everywhere.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review

Customer Development is Not a Focus Group

The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development

Trending Sources

Lessons Learned: What is customer development?

Lessons Learned: Customer Development Engineering

Why vanity metrics are dangerous

Lessons Learned: Combining agile development with customer development

Early-stage Regional Venture Funds–part 2 of 3 of Bigger in Bend

Reinventing Life Science Startups – Evidence-based Entrepreneurship

Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out – The Startup Genome Project

Can You Trust Any vc's Under 40?

Lessons Learned: The lean startup

[Review] The Lean Startup

The Lean Startup SXSW 2013

See More than 120 Speakers and Mentors at The Lean Startup Conference

Lessons Learned: The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time

SuperMac War Story 6: Building The Killer Team – Mission, Intent.

Minimum Viable Product: a guide

Lessons Learned: The metrics and levers of engagement.

Lessons Learned: Using AdWords to assess demand for your new.

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Harvard Business.

Lessons Learned: Five Whys

Introducing Lean Planning: How to plan less and grow faster

SuperMac War Story 4: Repositioning SuperMac – “Market Type” at.

How Customer Development Failed Us

Lessons Learned: About the author

A full day of Lean Startup Workshops on December 4, 2012

Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem)

Lessons Learned: Built to learn

Lessons Learned: What does a startup CTO actually do?

Lessons Learned: The product manager's lament

Why we need to teach MBA’s about modern entrepreneurship (and what Harvard Business School is doing about it)

Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Speed up or slow down? (for Harvard Business Review)

Create Structure out of the Gate and You’ll Thank Yourself Later

Lessons Learned: SEM on five dollars a day

Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond"

The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business Review)

Vertical Markets 1: Bad Advice – All Startups are the Same « Steve.

Building a new startup hub

Lessons Learned: Principles of Lean Startups, presentation for.

Lessons Learned: Work in small batches

Lessons Learned: Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

Lessons Learned: Just-In-Time Scalability

Thank you

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