Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Here’s the punchline: if you run your company as if you have closed a VC equity financing round even though you actually closed a convertible debt round, you’ll be in much better shape when it comes time to raise your Series A financing. Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited.

Burn Rate 153

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 153

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Market Risk vs. Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention.

Vertical 167

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. Good luck, engineering manager. It was painful for a lot of people.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

The Ultimate Combination of Startup Business Development Methods - ArcticStartup , November 16, 2010 I've been a huge fan of Steven Blank's Customer Development methodology for a long time. Finance, IT, Legal). Your First Iteration of an Idea Will Be Wrong. And Iridium would do this without building a single cell tower.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

If you never have, you can create your own using Google Finance. If you never have, you can create your own using Google Finance. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Go ahead and try it, then come back. Youve just experienced vanity metrics hell.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

In the case of an entrepreneur pitching for finance, its the same fear that has them putting on a facade and not comfortable in what they do and dont know that will see them a long way off getting funded. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

As an agenda for each meeting, I suggest: – How can we most add value, in addition to helping with financing? Nick Kim , Crosscut’s Head of Platform, in his presentation at the 4th Annual VC Platform Summit, shared their Platform development methodology, which he viewed as an exercise in product development.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. existing enterprises are establishing corporate innovation groups. StageGate Process.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 126

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 126

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP. This is the simplest version of your product minus the frills and frosting. It’s a particularly popular strategy in the world of product development and is used to quickly and quantitatively test a product or a product feature.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

They have many, many man-years of development and customer development in them. You have your general management meeting and in your general management meeting you talk about product development, about marketing and about finance. Edwin: There are a million others. It’s bundled in different groups.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 1, 2018

The question is – How can you have the most productive business meetings? From my years of experience working with many entrepreneurs, including technology companies, finance and real-estate, product and coaching, I have found that there are 4 main categories of business meetings that occur when building a business.

Stealth 198

Stealth Partner Developer Networking 198

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan kept the corporate staff small and focused on policymaking, corporate finance and planning. Durant Versus Sloan – Part 1 « Steve Blank steveblank.com/2009/10/01/durant-versus-sloan-part-1 – view page – cached + Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) + Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40?

Silicon Valley 184

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 184

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

In an early stage startup, instead of sales being up front, the point departments are likely to be product development and customer development. Later on in this same company’s life, sales will become the pointy end and product development moves to a supporting role.

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 133

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 6, 2014

This is a quote from Leander Kahney’s recently published book on Apple design chief Jony Ive: “In the world according to Steve Jobs, the ANPP would rapidly evolve into a well-defined process for bringing new products to market by laying out in extreme detail every stage of product development.

Product 84

Product Venture Capital Lean Customer Development 84

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

This is why so many small businesses can be financed with simple bank loans; the level of risk and uncertainty is well enough understood that a reasonably intelligent loan officer can assess its prospects. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ▼ June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Among those: plentiful financing and nerds , a culture that celebrates both failure and success, and an ethos of openness and sharing. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? ScienceDaily: Corporate culture is most important.

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

what are the most crucial steps to be taken by a new tech startup when outsourcing major part of the tech to IT firms or outsourcing “product development” eg new social media website project? Near shoring development with your team (ex: your team is based in Canada / India) is cool, but not outsourcing. 1) Hire A’s.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Customer service. Great for visualizing work of product development. easy business finance software. YCombinator Series AA Equity Financing Documents. Read post Why Learning should be your top 2013 new year’s resolution  for a full list. Codeacademy.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Israel Startup 53

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

are just emerging for business people (customer development, business model generation,). He correctly identifies the three disciplines that have to be represented in a balanced and collaborative manner: developer, designer, distributer. A passionate, driven, common goal orientated and collaborative team will conquer.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

But lots of lawyers and finance kids in New York thought they had stable jobs that would make them rich. But lots of lawyers and finance kids in New York thought they had stable jobs that would make them rich. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 111

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 111

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle. In the 20 th century startups I was part of, the time to build a first product release was measured in years as we turned out the founder’s vision of what customers wanted. (And

Restful 249

Restful Silicon Valley San Jose Puerto Rico 249

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

AgileZen – project management visually see and interact with your work Kanbanery – Simple online team or personal kanban board LeanKit Kanban – Great for visualizing work of product development Kanban Pad – “Nice and lean” and free online Kanban tool Banana Scrum – A tool simple as Scrum itself.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Because, unless you are working in an extremely static environment, your product development team is learning and getting better all the time. Compounding is not a process that most people find intuitive, and thats as true in engineering as it is in finance, so it requires a lot of encouragement in the early days to stay the course.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79