Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

He just hired Meg Whitman. Given the stock market was buying “the story and vision” of anything internet, inflated expectations were more important than traditional metrics like customers, growth, revenue, or heaven forbid, profits. the ex-CEO of HP and eBay, as CEO of NewTV. The Lean Startup isn’t dead.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

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

JUNE 25, 2009

These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers. Business customers were starting to ask for “office automation solutions” – word processing, spreadsheets, graphing software on a desktop. 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

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. Note to Chinese Communist party – the best name for your propaganda department should probably not be the “Propaganda Department.”). It’s an amazing cat and mouse system.

China 328

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 328

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

When you look through the list , you’ll see big names that we’re very pleased we landed, epic companies we really want to hear from, and people we’re particularly excited to present because they have incredible stories to share--and you won’t hear them anyplace else.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

competitive analyses, channel and customer collateral (white papers, data sheets, product reviews), customer surveys, and market requirements documents. We hired union laborers to do that. 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 Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

So, if youre interested in helping avoid mistakes like that, here are the steps: Get a domain name. It doesnt have to be the worlds catchiest name, just pick something reasonably descriptive. If youre concerned about sullying your eventual brand name, dont use your "really good" name, pick a code name.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

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

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development? The core idea behind customer development is that the assumptions you make about a target market are only guesses. Website Analysis.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

In my last post, I mentioned that you should strive to hire people with the right kind of ambition. How #redgate hired 10 geeks in five weeks - Business of Software Blog , August 5, 2010 In April, I wrote : Right now, we’re running a “Ten geeks in five weeks” project. Develop your business plan. Long back-story here.)

Startup 191

Startup CTO Hire Cofounder Venture Capital 191

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

You’ll think about your business, name, logo and colors; but maybe more importantly, you’ll think through who your target audience is and how you want them to feel about your product or service. He has been praised by the likes of former President Barack Obama, who named him a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30. WordPress DIY.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

First, a definition: the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. MVP, despite the name, is not about creating minimal products. Some caveats right off the bat. August 3, 2009 8:08 PM William Mitchell said.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

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. Return the name of the hypothesis chosen or assigned.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

If you’re a startup raising money or just want to see your name online, there’s not a better blog on the web. He spoke at the Founder Institute last week, and his advice was to not hire a PR agency until there were so many inbound requests that you can’t handle them yourself.

Silicon Valley 215

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 215

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. In a customer problem pivot, we try to solve a different problem for the same customer segment. When doing intense customer development, the problem team can attain a high level of empathy with potential customers.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Any customer who used the four critical color publishing applications was going to be blown away by how much better the SuperMac boards were. Tell Me How to Find You But having benchmarks in hand that showed us as the winner did us no good unless all our potential customers could see them. Theoretically, that’s why I hired them.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 128

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2014

In my interview with Hunter, we discuss: The key responsibilities of a business development professional. How to get big name testimonials and clients. The importance of the customer feedback cycle & the role it plays for AWeber. It’s Not A Conversion Problem, It’s A Customer Development Problem.

Developer 104

Developer Cofounder API New Jersey 104

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. Now, whenever I screen resumes, I ask the recruiter to black out any demographic information from the resume itself: name, age, gender, country of origin.

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. Note to Chinese Communist party – the best name for your propaganda department should probably not be the “Propaganda Department.”). It’s an amazing cat and mouse system.

China 220

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 220

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

As Im pontificating about agile, I see the name Kent Beck in my peripheral vision. Eric Names matter. By pulling in a web of associations, names help people quickly assess ideas. There is a dark side to naming. The naming question has been raised about the "lean" in Lean Startups. Eric Names matter.

Lean 140

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 140

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. I worked at Multiflow, a name you’d recognize, ending up running the OS group. We’re building a supercomputer.”

North Carolina 133

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 133

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 29, 2012

Over Saturday and Sunday teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas and building a minimal viable product. Now is a full-time employee that works for the operation, but that was a relatively recent circumstance: before he was hired, he volunteered his time. Discuss.

St. Louis 135

St. Louis Kansas City Norway Kansas 135

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

And engaging customers in such ways is generally much less expensive than hiring costly employees or agencies. Here are some insights about finding and leveraging Rock Star customers: “Rock Stars” are not who you think they are. So who are your potential high-value Rock Star customers? Not necessarily.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

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. Perhaps you can determine whether a product is new by asking customers to name the competition.

Customer Development 222

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 222

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

We would pretty much bid on any phrase that was "[name of competitive product] chat" and variations like that. And then we would use that simple analytics system I mentioned to monitor the conversion rates of customers from each campaign. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

In talking with Mary Poppendieck about it, she said that the Chief Engineer role at 3M was called a "Product Champion" The name is less important than understanding the depth of competence that this person has, and what it takes to build it. There are some good anecdotes about Chief Engineers in the Toyota Product Development Book.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. So I have a question for you, Jason.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This is the magic of sales: by learning about each customer in-depth, they can convince each of them that this product would solve serious problems. Now, in some situations, this over-selling would lead to a secondary problem, namely, that customers would realize they had been duped and refuse to re-subscribe.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

David Teten

MARCH 28, 2012

We’ll feature in our published work the most effective firms and practices we identify, subject to the interviewees giving us permission to use their names and data. We’re now in the midst of surveying VCs and entrepreneurs for this research. We’d greatly appreciate you taking a few minutes to fill out our survey: VCs please click here.

Portfolio 144

Portfolio Private Equity Venture Capital Early Stage 144

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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

As Ive argued elsewhere , my belief is that startups (and anyone else trying to find an unknown solution to an unknown problem ) have to measure progress with validated learning about customers. In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. Expo (and a call for he.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

He had raised a seed round and then a Series A from a name brand Venture firm. I was glad to see him but it was clear over coffee that he was struggling with his first hiring failure. They helped me hire the best VP of Sales I could find. He was in the top 1% club at (insert the name of your favorite large company here.)

Startup 319

Startup Business Model Customer Development Bandwidth 319

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

In fact, we know so much that we already know what they will care enough about (namely, the product’s quality – as opposed to, say, missing features). The second misunderstanding is a concern for what will happen if things turn out exactly as we originally predicted (namely, badly). I understand this fear.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

It’s easy to overestimate the impact of this kind of traffic because it just feels good to have your name and company featured. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? It strokes your ego. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 21, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. I see the name of Noel’s company. Why don’t you give Jason the name of your company or your URL? The name game. Noel: Am I live?

Widget 204

Widget Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 204

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Pay attention to whether people are comfortable “naming names&# in the meeting. " paragraph have the heading "Training New Hires", above the "Returning to the meeting itself." The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164