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 287

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 287

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

It’s the antithesis of the Lean Startup. As a reminder, the Dot Com bubble was a five-year period from August 1995 (the Netscape IPO ) when there was a massive wave of experiments on the then-new internet, in commerce, entertainment, nascent social media, and search. The Rise of the Lean Startup. And it may work. IPOs dried up.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

For decades this revered business magazine described management techniques that were developed in and were for large corporations – offering more efficient and creative ways to execute existing business models. ” It defined a startup as a “temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.”

Technical Review 331

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 331

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2014

The University of Maryland is now integrating the Lean LaunchPad ® into standard innovation and entrepreneurship courses across all 12 colleges within the University. Over 44 classes have embedded the business model canvas and/or Customer Discovery including a year-long course taken by every single one of its bioengineering majors.

Maryland 280

Maryland Lean DC Virginia 280

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

Over the last three years our Lean LaunchPad / NSF Innovation Corps classes have been teaching hundreds of entrepreneurial teams a year how to build their startups by getting out of the building and testing their hypotheses behind their business model. Technology in search of a market. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching'

Lean 322

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 322

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

In January, we introduced a new graduate course at Stanford called the " target="_blank">Lean LaunchPad. It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. OK, somehow we got them interested.

Lean 307

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 307

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

We’ve pivoted our Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum. We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. “Customer Development” to test the hypotheses outside the building and.

Intellectual Property 290

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 290

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2010

They start with an innovation, search for a repeatable business model, build the infrastructure for a company, then grow by efficiently executing the model. If you’ve been reading my book on Customer Development and follow my work on Market Type , this type of innovation is best for adding new products to existing markets.

Search 251

Search Agile Customer Development Technical Review 251

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

For decades this revered business magazine described management techniques that were developed in and were for large corporations – offering more efficient and creative ways to execute existing business models. ” It defined a startup as a “temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.”

Technical Review 223

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 223

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2010

One of the principles of Customer Development is to get out of the building and understand the smallest feature-set customers will pay for in the first release.). Usually the cry is for more features, typically based on “Here’s what I heard from the last customer I visited.”. Steve, you’re wrong.

Customer Development 313

Customer Development Business Model Developer Search 313

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

But to give you a sense of how fast they are moving, it’s only been a week since I posted the syllabus for our new Stanford entrepreneurship class Engr245 ( The Lean Launchpad.) Here’s the course announcement from Professor Vergara (in English): Customer Development Course in Chile – Lean Launchpad.

Chile 241

Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 241

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

As our Lean LaunchPad for Life Sciences class winds down, a good number of the 26 teams are trying to figure out whether they should go forward to turn their class project into a business. It was a lifelong lesson that taught me to never start a business where you hate your customers. It never goes well. You just want them to go away.

Cofounder 330

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 330

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2013

Thus began our search for a program that would properly balance the focus on the present with the need to increase our options for the future. In retrospect we designed something akin to a startup accelerator, the Lean LaunchPad classes or the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps , although none of these existed in 2006.

Programming 301

Programming Design Lean Seed Money 301

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2013

Thus began our search for a program that would properly balance the focus on the present with the need to increase our options for the future. In retrospect we designed something akin to a startup accelerator, the Lean LaunchPad classes or the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps , although none of these existed in 2006.

Programming 293

Programming Design Lean Seed Money 293

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# The search for a profitable and scalable business model might require a startup [.] That’s why startups are agile. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 309

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 309

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

—– Lean Innovation Management. In the last five years “ Lean Startup ” methodologies have enabled entrepreneurs to efficiently build a startup by searching for product/market fit rather than blindly trying to execute. The result will be: a new, Lean version of the Three Horizons of Innovation. Here’s how.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot.

Silicon Valley 208

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 208

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

He invented the category of sponsored search. He created GoTo.com (later renamed Overture) out of a frustration with search. At the time when you did a search on Lycos, Alta Vista or similar for a category such as Cars you ended up getting 9 spam results and 1 proper website to meet your needs. Overture (Goto.com).

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

The Search for the Black Swan What keeps founders and their investors going is the the dream/belief that your startup will be the Black Swan – a company that breaks all the obvious rules, ignores tradition and does something unique and spectacular and with a result that is unpredicted and financial returns that are breathtaking.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 223

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

I am always surprised when critics complain that the Lean Startup’s Build, Measure, Learn approach is nothing more than “throwing incomplete products out of the building to see if they work.”. It’s time to update Build, Measure, Learn to what we now know is the best way to build Lean startups. Here’s how. Build-Measure-Learn.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. This week they were testing who the customer, user, payer for the product will be (and discovering if they have a multi-sided business model , one with both buyers and sellers.) This post is part four. Syllabus is here.

Customer 241

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 241

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 ? Search Versus Execution.

Search 326

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 326

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 11, 2011

The Lean Startup Machine looks a lot like reality television for startups. I have written previously about how powerful the these events are as a teaching tool for Lean Startup principles. Below you will find the final presentations of each of the Lean Startup Machine NYC teams, including SnappSchool, who was judged to be the winner.

New York City 161

New York City New York Lean SMS 161

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

Established businesses execute business models while startups search for them. Yet everyone – investors, entrepreneurs, academics — expected new startups to follow the same practices that worked for large companies – write a business plan, forecast 5-year sales projections and build the product without ever talking to customers.

Lean 224

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 224

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a Customer Development process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model. This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile.

Cofounder 230

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 230

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

It has replaced how to write a business plan with hands-on Lean Startup methods. To create great entrepreneurs, we had to give our students the experience of navigating the chaos and uncertainty of running a lean startup while providing the same kind of rigorous framework the business plan did in its day. Today the U.C.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2010

I’ve been teaching Customer Development at U.C. Berkeley was brave enough to let me write and teach a class on a subject that no one had ever heard of – Customer Development. Customer Development was a process to quickly search for a profitable business model when customer needs (features, pricing, channel, etc.)

Customer Development 245

Customer Development Lean Developer Customer 245

Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2013

The Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship curriculum has caught fire. It dawned on me that the plans were a symptom of a larger problem: we were executing business plans when we should first be searching for business models. So what would a search process for a business model look like? Teaching “Search versus Execution”.

Lean 295

Lean Agile Customer Development Business Model 295

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

I know that this all seems obvious now with the movements started by Steven Blank ( Four Steps of Epiphany ) with the whole Customer Development processes / Lean Startup movements also popularized by people like Eric Ries. And he gave them all early access to our prototypes for reaction. Back then it seemed foreign.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 15, 2013

Lean Business: Capacity Management, Overhead, and Your Business – [link]. Paid Search: Are You Wasting Your Money? Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Paid Search: Are You Wasting Your Money? Paid Search: Are You Wasting Your Money? – [link].

Social Media 105

Social Media Small Business Design Media 105

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2013

It’s been fun watching a 20th Century entrepreneur learn new tricks as he builds his next startup, FindTheBest using Lean Methodology. Lean Start-up Connection: Business Model Canvas. By leaning on our technology, we knew we could build cheaply, we just didn’t know how cheaply. Lean Start-up Connection: Agile Development.

Lean 302

Lean Agile Customer Development SEO 302

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

Modern entrepreneurship began at the turn of this century with the observation that startups aren’t smaller versions of large companies – large companies at their core execute known business models, while startups search for scalable business models. However, they don’t help you figure out where to start the search for your new business.

Lean 334

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 334

Steve Blank

JUNE 28, 2014

If you can’t see the video click here Filed under: 2 Minute Lessons , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching. 2 Minute Lessons Business Model versus Business Plan Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching'

Customer 320

Customer Search Lean Business Model 320

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

The key things I want students to take from the class are: Understand that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a profitable business model. For example, when we taught the value of getting out of the building and agile development, we had Eric Ries talk about the Lean Startup.

Business Model 236

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 236

Steve Blank

MAY 10, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. Class lectures were over last week, but most teams kept up the mad rush to talk to even more customers and further refine their products. The Lean LaunchPad was designed to fill that void. Syllabus is here. This is the End.

Lean 288

Lean Business Model Agile Customer Development 288

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

In 2012 I got together with Alexander Osterwalder , Henry Chesbrough and Andre Marquis to think about the Lean and the future of corporate innovation. It didn’t take us very long to connect the dots between exponential growth, business model innovation and the “Lean Startup” movement. in developing these new models.

Lean 331

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 331

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

You need to know the day-in-the-life of the customer. If you’re constantly correlating data and searching for patterns, all intelligence if properly integrated will give you insight. We don’t need to know all this stuff.” Yes you do. From top to bottom.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 128