Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

While the last post was titled “ You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When They Offer You a Job “, this post should probably be titled, “You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When You Offer Them a Job.&# These hires were definitely not your standard marketing types.

Engineer 224

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 224

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. it is an art) and again hired professionals. Some men see things as they are and ask why.

Agile 334

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 334

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

They provide consulting, promotion, product testing, hiring, training and incubation services to startups. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' Technology Business Incubators (TBIs).

Programming 287

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 287

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. And all of that cost was caused by one activity: hiring. Hiring is no different from any other company process. Sounds a little abstract, though, doesnt it?

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

They’ve stopped hiring the best talent, and startups are not looking so risky compared to large companies. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. Nokia was blind-sided in a classic disruptive innovation. Nanny-Culture, Lack of Risk Taking, Not Sharing.

Finland 332

Finland Naming Russia Government 332

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

At Tekes, government employees (and their hired consultants) – with no equity, no risk or reward, no startup or venture capital experience – try to pick startup winners and losers. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Technology , Venture Capital.

Finland 329

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 329

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. They’ve tested their hypotheses with literally hundreds of customer interviews on every continent in the world. Corporate elephants can dance.

Silicon Valley 239

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 239

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? Customer Development and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

Technology 145

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 145

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2014

We didn’t know it at the time, but with that investment we had paid for front-row VIP seats to witness the origins of Customer Development and the Lean Startup. Twenty years and 100,000’s of copies of those books later, my life has fortuitously intersected with Steve Blank once again now that we’ve both become educators.

Maryland 280

Maryland Lean DC Virginia 280

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

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

We hired union laborers to do that. I hired a Director of Product Marketing who in his last company had ran its marketing and then went out into the field and became its national sales director. What’s your advice about hiring sales/marketing folks? (I The same was true for the Product Marketing group.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

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

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. I was hired as a training instructor to teach microprocessor system design for the existing Z-80 family and to write a new course for Zilog’s soon to be launched 16-bit processor, the Z-8000. You created it and own it.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 206

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' It usually doesn’t end well.

China 328

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 328

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 11, 2013

They provide consulting, promotion, product testing, hiring, training and incubation services to startups. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' Technology Business Incubators (TBIs).

Programming 179

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 179

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Here are just a few things you might look for: Reducing risk in young companies Bringing innovation to the enterprise Designing and running experiments Customer development strategies All conference passes are on sale right now, and you can compare them here.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 17, 2010

When your customers expect a turd sandwich and you deliver a turkey club with chipotle mayonnaise, you earn major bonus points, like users twittering about your service , people switching to your service because of tech support, or customers not only following your Tweets but instructing their followers to do the same.

Technical Review 245

Technical Review Sales Turkey Software Review 245

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

AUGUST 22, 2011

Over the last few weeks I’ve gotten involved in hiring for two startups, a public agency and a non profit. In the last week I had four separate groups through the ranch all wanting to talk either about hiring a senior exec or a senior exec looking for a new job. Are you hiring for search or execution skills? Draw a pie chart.

Hiring 299

Hiring Non-Compete Search Customer Development 299

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

In this business environment, hiring a new CEO who had experience growing a company around a single technical innovation was a rational decision for venture investors. Startups traditionally required millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product to customers. That’s no longer the case. We now understand that’s wrong.

Restful 249

Restful Silicon Valley San Jose Puerto Rico 249

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Reply steveblank , on March 28, 2009 at 7:27 am Said: Denis, Over time the blogs tagged under the “customer development&# category will build up a narrative of illustrative stories of how customer development evolved in practice. You need to hire the right type of sales people for the type of [.]

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 161

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

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

They close on the $750k, hire a buddy or two, buy some Macs, and get to work. Things start to get a little fuzzy in terms of priorities, but not to fret, the new office is coming along really well with all of the hiring! Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited.

Burn Rate 154

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 154

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2012

Think about it: Companies hire people who come from outside the buyer’s world and don’t share his interests — employees, agencies, consultants, and the like — and expect them to persuade buyers to hand over their money. Build strong customer communities.

Marketing 234

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Social Network 234

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

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

We were impressed when we found that they did the in-person interviews by hiring usertesting.com for $39 to set up test scenarios, gave the users specific tasks to accomplish with their minimum viable product, videotaped the customer interactions and summarized customer likes and dislikes.)

Customer 241

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 241

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

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 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

After all, if you already have an all-male startup, you’re already at a disadvantage when it comes to hiring the very women that could fix that imbalance. And yet, when I suggest this practice to hiring managers and recruiters alike, they rarely do it. Beyond hiring, our actual work process matters, too.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' It usually doesn’t end well.

China 220

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 220

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. How would that change my company strategy?

Vertical 167

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Check your assumptions, what went wrong?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2014

The importance of the customer feedback cycle & the role it plays for AWeber. How to get your software business to the point where you can hire a business development director. Hunter shares some extremely valuable insights that will prove useful in building beneficial relationships and getting highly qualified customers.

Developer 104

Developer Cofounder API New Jersey 104

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

When I began to hire product managers, sales reps and implementation staff from existing document management companies like Documentum and OpenText is when I got first-hand input into what lessons they had learned in their companies over the previous decade. So the whole customer development cycle is very streamlined.

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 29, 2018

If you want app development that is both affordable and efficient, you need to know how to hire programmers to do the job. Let’s take a closer look at and how to fill the job position for your next development project in a way that brings your business the most value. The Rise of App Development in the Business World.

Developer 107

Developer Offshore Software Development Software Developers 107

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Supercomputers get Personal Back in Sunnyvale my friend had not only been hired but had convinced the team that we should be building hardware – making a new class of computers not a software application. We’re building a supercomputer.” We told Andy we’d talk further when he got back from Europe.

North Carolina 133

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 133