Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Dino Vendetti a VC at Bay Partners, moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Over the years Dino and I brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Part 3: Engineering a Regional Tech Cluster. Tech investing is risky.

Early Stage 295

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 295

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 21, 2013

Eric Ries was kind enough to invite me to speak at his Lean Startup Conference. In the talk I reviewed the basic components of the Lean Startup and described how we teach it. 3:36 The 3 Components of the Lean Startup. 6:00 Teaching startups & companies Lean: The Lean LaunchPad class.

Video 288

Video Oakland Lean Venture Capital 288

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 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 30, 2012

The Lean LaunchPad Class. You may have read my previous posts about the Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship class. The class teaches founders how to dramatically reduce their failure rate through the combination of business model design, customer development and agile development using the Startup Owners Manual.

Startup 335

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

What does your Chief Technology Officer do all day? Often times, it seems like people are thinking its synonymous with "that guy who gets paid to sit in the corner and think technical deep thoughts" or "that guy who gets to swoop in a rearrange my project at the last minute on a whim." But along the way, something strange happened.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

In my 21 years as an entrepreneur, I would come up for air once a month to religiously read the Harvard Business Review. It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with. Today, we’ve come full circle as Lean goes mainstream.

Technical Review 223

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 223

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Hes a new employee, and he was not properly trained in TDD So far, this isnt much different from the kind of analysis any competent operations team would conduct for a site outage. What started as a technical problem actually turned out to be a human and process problem. We didnt even practice TDD across our whole team.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2012

Long before there was the Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or Customer Development there was a guy in Santa Barbara California who had already figured it out. I want to tell you a story about how a team pivoted and succeeded by synchronizing product and customer development. Filed under: Customer Development.

San Jose 261

San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 261

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building.

Customer Development 129

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 129

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. This is the pivot, a crucial tactical maneuver for the lean startup [.] Are These Your Slides?

Silicon Valley 261

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 261

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

some came from our customer service, some were to improve performance / scalability from tech ops, some were bug fixes, etc.) They attended property management association meetings in Oregon outside of the technology echo chamber of California to get a sense for people’s daily problems. I rarely see the tech team do this.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Plus, as product development teams in lean startups become adept at learning-and-discovery (as opposed to just executing to spec), its clear that some bugs shouldnt be fixed. We always have to avoid that dysfunction - even the lean manufacturing greats realized that they couldnt afford to see their manual-labor workforce that way.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Posted on September 14, 2009 by steveblank Over the last 30 years Wall Street’s appetite for technology stocks have changed radically – swinging between unbridled enthusiasm to believing they’re all toxic. Tech acquisitions went crazy at the same time the IPO market did. 3) invest in and take equity stakes in exchange for capital.

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Today, I want to introduce you to a new concept for starting and growing successful companies: Lean Planning™. Before I dive too deeply into the Lean Planning methodology, it makes sense to talk about its history and where it comes from. Lean Planning is born.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 15, 2008 The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time Split-testing is a core lean startup discipline, and its one of those rare topics that comes up just as often in a technical context as in a business-oriented one when Im talking to startups. Thanks for writing this article.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

This class is built on conducting in-person of interviews with customers/ beneficiaries and stakeholders, but due to the pandemic, teams now had to do all their customer discovery via a computer screen. How would customer interviews work via video? This would seem to be a fatal stake through the heart of the class.

Lean 417

Lean Security Asia SBIR 417

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, January 12, 2010 Amazing lean startup resources A year ago, there was no lean startup movement. I continue to believe that the explosion of interest in the lean startup has very little to do with me. If you are attempting to apply lean startup ideas in your own business - you are not alone.

Lean 146

Lean San Francisco Wiki Startup 146

Steve Blank

JANUARY 15, 2017

I-Corps uses Lean Startup methods to teach scientists how to turn their discoveries into entrepreneurial, job-producing businesses. And finally this bill acknowledges that networks of entrepreneurs and mentors are critical in getting technologies translated from the lab to the marketplace. Why This Matters. in Science or Nature.

Lean 274

Lean Technical Review Government Washington 274

Steve Blank

MAY 19, 2021

To help a large Defense organization wrestle with how to increase the velocity of innovation in their ranks Steve Blank and I spent the better part of last week with our heads together reviewing everything we learned in the five years since we merged the concepts of problem curation and Lean while launching the innovation pipeline.

Curation 353

Curation Technical Review Lean Australia 353

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

I was the junior guy on a project team; I was called in to do some technical due diligence for reasons that were obscure to me, because the team already had much more senior engineers assigned to it. As a technical fix, it was brilliant. I remember one such meeting vividly. So they react in two ways.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, June 2, 2010 The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business Review) I continue my series for Harvard Business Review with the Lean Startup technique called Five Whys. Techniques from lean manufacturing can be part of a startups innovation culture. Speed up or slow down?

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

It took me 8 startups and 21 years to get it right, (and one can argue success was due to the Internet bubble rather then any brilliance.) This mantra of talking to customers and iterating the product is the basis of the Lean Startup Methodology that Eric Ries has been evangelizing and I’ve been teaching at U.C. I was an idiot.

Silicon Valley 208

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 208

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2010

Over time, innovations outside the company (demographic, cultural, new technologies, etc.) The company loses customers, then revenues and profits decline and it eventually gets acquired or goes out of business. valued by their existing customers – fairly well. F urther Reading : Harvard Business Review Articles.

Search 251

Search Agile Customer Development Technical Review 251

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, August 3, 2009 Minimum Viable Product: a guide One of the most important lean startup techniques is called the minimum viable product. I was delighted to be asked to give a brief talk about the MVP at the inaugural meetup of the lean startup circle here in San Francisco. Thanks Eric.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, July 2, 2009 How to conduct a Five Whys root cause analysis In the lean startup workshops , we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the technique of Five Whys. My intention is to describe a full working process, similar to what I’ve seen at IMVU and other lean startups.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

competitive analyses, channel and customer collateral (white papers, data sheets, product reviews), customer surveys, and market requirements documents. And our Director of Technical Marketing was superb at understanding customer needs and communicating them to engineering. It will cost you your job.” It became [.]

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Its common to find a hacker at the heart of almost any successful technology company. When a startup encounters difficult technical problems, this is the guy you want solving them. As the company grows, hes the go-to person for almost everything technical, and so hes very much in demand. All is not lost, though.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Part-Time VPE 94

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. Zilog produced one of the first 8-bit microprocessors , the Z-80 (competing at the time with Intel’s 8080 , Motorola 6800, and MOS Technology 6502.) The bill had come due. You created it and own it.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 206

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

Expo Intensive rocked, the mainstream media has started writing about the Lean Startup, and - most of all - the movement continues to grow and evolve. I went to the conference thinking that I was well grounded in the basics of the Lean Startup approach and that attendance would hone the edges of that understanding.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

It said, “teach us to number our days that we gain a heart of wisdom “ Since then I’ve had a series of interesting careers: technician in the Air Force, tech writer, marketer, entrepreneur, CEO and now educator and mentor. Over the last decade I’ve watched the Lean Startup approach to entrepreneurship take off.

Lean 224

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 224

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

What reviews did they trust? Yet our customers said they got their company and product information from only three publications: MacWorld, MacUser and MacWeek. They said the product reviews in these publications were by far the biggest influence on which card to buy. (This made our PR problem manageable and focused.

Silicon Valley 213

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 213

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process. Junior developers tend to take a more traditional approach and have to be coached into following this line of thinking.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

The Next Web

JANUARY 27, 2013

Four books helped me out a lot over the last few years: Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank, Running Lean by Ash Maurya, The Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris and Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson. This is only relevant for non-technical founders like myself. For me, these books were great guides.

Netherlands 159

Netherlands Technical Review Software Review Cofounder 159

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ) Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique.

Oakland 315

Oakland Asia Lean Video 315

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Of all the tactics I have advocated as part of the lean startup , none has provoked as many extreme reactions as continuous deployment , a process that allows companies to release software in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering. My office is in the Terman Engineering Building.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 210