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.&# Context here.)

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. What Do VC’s Do?

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

The Times Square Strategy discussion I had with Eric Ries , was still top of mind, so instead of my standard Customer Development lecture , I offered my thoughts on: the origin of Customer Development, where we are today, and where does Customer Development go, and how you can help get it there.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Now with a new infusion of $8 million dollars of venture capital, SuperMac had been resurrected from the dead and was attempting to restart. Why they were looking to me to run marketing wasn’t clear. The company was the laughing stock of the Mac market. The first step was to recruit a new management team.

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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. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup. I began to gain an appreciation of how world-class venture capitalists develop pattern recognition for these common types of problems.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Freemium models have their own scorekeeping.)

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Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Was SuperMac attempting to introduce radically new products and create a new market ? Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? No, not really.

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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. Ultimately you want to see if you can find customers and a market for the product as specified – as early as possible.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

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Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2009

The Customer Development talk can be seen here. That said I will be giving a Customer Development talk at TIECON , Saturday May 16th, 1:30 thanks for asking. steve Customer Development is Hard. « Market By Numbers - Brant Cooper , on May 5, 2009 at 3:55 pm Said: [.] Order Here.

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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.

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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.&# My advice was to start a policy of making reversible decisions before anyone left his office or before a meeting ended.

Silicon Valley 310

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

Customer Development 270

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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. His enthusiastic response was, “This will revolutionize marketing departments!”

Silicon Valley 261

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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. You’re not joining a big company.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. After more customer interviews, we have shifted our market type hypothesis to- entering an existant market. Just a reflection on my family and hopes for our children. Order Here. Now In Print!

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Pattern Recognition One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm against a continual collection of customer and market data. For me this was one of the joys of entrepreneurship – constant learning and new insights.

Customer 218

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on?

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. Your board nods sagely at your target customer list. Market Type But most startups aren’t in existing markets.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Ardent would be my third technology company as a VP of Marketing (Convergent Technologies and MIPS Computers were the other two.) I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.” It would be the company where I actually earned the title.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2011

Second, to share how my how my thinking about entrepreneurship as a distinct practice and how Customer Development as one of its central components has evolved over the last decade. And with the 30-year statute of limitations now passed, stories about who I worked for (and the names of agencies.).

Silicon Valley 218

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

At the same time we were educating the press , we began to educate our own marketing department about what exactly we were supposed to be doing inside the company. During the first few weeks I asked each of my department heads what they did for marketing and the company. Titles are not the same as what your job is. This is a big idea.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Our first question was, did the total number of customers that had already bought products from our competitors and us represent a saturated market or the tip of the iceberg? In other words what was the Total Available Market (TAM) and how much of the market had been already served? First, I presented what I had learned.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

Rather than a traditional VC pitch I suggested that they do something unconventional and tell the story of their journey in Customer Discovery and Validation. The heart of the Cafepress presentation is the “ Lessons Learned from our Customers ” section. The VC firm delivered a term sheet for an 8-digit second round that afternoon.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

We had thought really hard about “ market type ” and decided to reposition the company from a technology provider to a solutions provider. Metrics – Mine is Bigger Than Yours The first thing SuperMac needed to do was to change how our potential color desktop publishing customers viewed our products versus our competitors’ products.

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

If you’re in markets that still exhibit at them (semiconductors, communications, enterprise software, etc.,) ———— T o: Marketing Department From: Steve Subject: Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters Generating Leads Ownership If your company is going to a show to generate leads, then sales owns the show. .

Silicon Valley 139

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

This is the first way to get video into a computer, we’re going to sell and market this board like there’s no tomorrow. People who aren’t current customers of our graphics boards will get to know our company and brand. That’s every marketeers excuse for putting their kids in an ad.) It was fun watching it happen.

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Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

What’s Marketing? But the one group that had me stumped was something called “marketing.&# &# Explain it to me again,&# I’d ask. One day I heard there was an opening in the marketing department for a product marketing manager for the Z-8000 peripheral chips. In reality it would be another 20 years.)

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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.” Little Indians and Big Indians At MIPS Computers , my second semiconductor company, I was the VP of Marketing and defacto head of Sales. I was just in marketing.

Customer Development 288

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Maybe It’s Me When I got to the SuperMac, our Marketing Communications group told me about our “award-winning&# retail packaging for our graphics boards. Her packaging class was so good that we sent every new marketer at SuperMac to take it. Yet when I saw our retail package, I was confused. Worry about the sales results.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. And in the 1960s ESL’s customers asked the company to analyze and interpret telemetry data even though this was a traditional function of the “customer.&# If you think the Cold War turned out the right side up (i.e.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Stanford had a Customer Development loop going on inside their own lab. The discoveries in tube and circuit research suggested new electronic intelligence and countermeasure techniques and systems; in turn the needs of the Applied Lab pushed tube and circuit development.

Silicon Valley 159

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Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

No building, no money, no customers, no market? These customer and market risks need to be translated into facts as soon as possible. Customer Development This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the Customer Development process. Great, sign me up.

Silicon Valley 237

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 21, 2010

Filed under: Customer Development « Requiem For A Roommate 2 Responses steve , on October 21, 2010 at 7:05 am Said: what did Carl say at 1:12 ? BTW, the definition of entrepreneurship I describe at 2:50 into the video is described in detail in the post “ You’re Not a Real Entrepreneur.&#

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (..)

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