Steve Blank

OCTOBER 30, 2012

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. More importantly, it makes no demands of you to stand and deliver your weekly customer development progress in front of your peers.

Startup 335

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

As part of our Lean LaunchPad classes at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and for the National Science Foundation, students build a startup in 8 weeks using Business Model Design + Customer Development. Set up the Lean LaunchLab or a WordPress blog to document your Customer Development progress. Size the market opportunity.

Lean 334

Lean Web Coder Business Model 334

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

This is a customer development problem. By the end of this article, you should have a better understanding of how to develop new products or tweak your existing offerings by working with existing or prospective customers to incorporate their feedback to create viable solutions to their problems, and clearly communicate their value.

Customer Development 126

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

The Customer Development process is the way startups quickly iterate and test each element of their business model , reducing customer and market risk. The first step of Customer Development is called Customer Discovery. outside the building and test them in front of customers.

Burn Rate 252

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 252

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

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

While our teams have mentors, socialize a lot and give great demos, the goal of our class final presentations is “ Lessons Learned ” – about product/market fit, pricing, acquisition/activation costs, pricing, partners, etc. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching.

Lean 322

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 322

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

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. Given Stanford’s 10 week quarters, we planned for eight weeks of lecture and the last two weeks for team final presentations.

Lean 307

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 307

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

In class I teased Todd that while the Navy had me present my Secret History of Silicon Valley talk in front of 4,000 cadets at the Naval Post Graduate School , I had yet to hear from the Air Force Academy. Requirements and a concept of operations are presented at the first, the System Requirements Review. Back to the Present.

Lean 271

Lean Technical Review Acquisition Software Review 271

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

Each team would be judged by their business model presentation on these five steps. There are now examples of business model presentations on the web. Filed under: Customer Development Manifesto , Durant versus Sloan: Startups Verus Companies , Teaching. What did you initially think your initial business model was?

Business Plan 320

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 320

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer development, etc. It is the key to “customer development” that Steve Blank talks about. I’m going to save that for a future blog post.

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2013

The teams present what they learned talking to 10-15 customer/week, and get comments, suggestions and critiques from their teaching team. If you can’t see the presentation above click here. If you can’t see the presentation above click here. If you can’t see the presentation above click here.

Lean 266

Lean Customer Business Model Customer Development 266

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. This methodology forces rapid hypothesis testing and Customer Development by getting out of the building while building the product. After 7 weeks they returned to Silicon Valley for their final presentations.

Incubator 310

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 310

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

This startup search process is the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. A business model competition would emulate the “out of the building” experience of real entrepreneurs executing the customer development / business model / agile stack. Utah: Entrepreneurial Surprises.

Business Model 285

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 285

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

Lean 263

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 263

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. He continued: “I’d like to convince my boss so our company can be your first customer.”

Silicon Valley 261

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 261

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Both Sides of the Table , July 22, 2010 An updated Digital Trends presentation - Jeff Hilimire , June 2, 2010 I do what I hate - Jessica Mah , January 7, 2010 Startup Equity Allocation - charliecrystle.com , January 11, 2010 When good investment decisions end up backing more women CEOs: Conversation with Cameron Lester at Azure Capital.

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

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. Your “Customer Development Process&# has really resonated for me.

Venture Capital 245

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 245

Steve Blank

JANUARY 2, 2014

Look at their Lesson Learned slides below If you can’t see the presentation above, click here. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Life Sciences , Teaching. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Life Sciences Teaching' If you can’t see the video above click here. Lessons Learned.

Lean 250

Lean Algorithm Customer Development IP 250

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

I presented to 1,000’s of entrepreneurs, talked to 17 startups, gave 12 lectures, had 9 interviews, chatted with 8 VC’s, sat on 4 panels, talked policy with 2 government ministers, 2 members of parliament, 1 head of a public pension fund and was in 1 TV-documentary. Thanks to Kristo Ovaska and team for the fabulous logistics!)

Finland 332

Finland Naming Russia Government 332

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

Before students are admitted, they formed teams, applied as a team with a business model canvas , had homework and were expected to be presenting their business model canvas hypotheses on day one of the class. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching'

Lean 286

Lean Customer Development Business Model Email 286

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.

Customer Development 229

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 229

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2013

All while keeping in mind that employees, managers and executives have day jobs – so how could we ask them to spend significant time on new ideas while not sacrificing their present obligations? 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.

Programming 301

Programming Design Lean Seed Money 301

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

I presented to 1,000’s of entrepreneurs, talked to 17 startups, gave 12 lectures, had 9 interviews, chatted with 8 VC’s, sat on 4 panels, talked policy with 2 government ministers, 2 members of parliament, 1 head of a public pension fund and was in 1 TV-documentary. Thanks to Kristo Ovaska and team for the fabulous logistics!)

Finland 329

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 329

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how Silicon Valley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. After I retired, Jerry Engel , director of the Lester Center on Entrepreneurship , at U.C.

Silicon Valley 302

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 302

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2013

All while keeping in mind that employees, managers and executives have day jobs – so how could we ask them to spend significant time on new ideas while not sacrificing their present obligations? 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.

Programming 293

Programming Design Lean Seed Money 293

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2012

Filed under: Air Force , Customer Development , Family/Career/Culture. Designed tradeshow booths, spent long nights at shows setting them up, and long days inside them during the shows. Unless you’ve had a ton of experience (which includes failing) in a broad range of areas you’re only guessing.

Thailand 334

Thailand Engineer Customer Development SEO 334

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

That died with waterfall software development. I’m not even talking about your 12-page Powerpoint presentation that you need to raise venture capital or to talk with potential biz dev partners. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small?

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2012

Joe made a compelling ROI (Return On Investment) presentation to the VP of Sales and the CFO. The CIO didn’t say much in the presentation (warning, warning) and he passed Joe on to his manager of data warehouse development. Filed under: Customer Development , E.piphany , Marketing.

Forecast 299

Forecast Sales Matching Customer Development 299

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

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2014

Present at the Creation. 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. Truth be told, we took a page out of Frank Rimalovski’s playbook at NYU and paid for Yang Tao to attend the Lean LaunchPad Educators Program.

Maryland 280

Maryland Lean DC Virginia 280

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Venture Capital | Tagged: Entrepreneurs « Customer Development Manifesto: Market Type (part 4) Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) » 16 Responses Jon Ziskind , on September 14, 2009 at 9:19 am Said: Steve – Great post and really great advice.

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

This being presented to another company’s proud engineering team who was being forced to buy product from us because they couldn’t build their own in time.) After I sat down I was convinced the only logical conclusion was for the customer to tell us how many they wanted to buy. The result wasn’t what I expected. Help them?!!

Technology 145

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 145

Steve Blank

APRIL 19, 2010

I’ve written and presented a bit on this subject.). Filed under: Customer Development , Venture Capital. Tags: Customer Development Venture Capital. Or look at Israel. They have more public companies on the U.S. NASDAQ stock exchange than any other country. (In In fact, 3 times all other countries combined.)

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley Venture Capital China New York 235

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

And I got to experience a type of customer buying behavior I had never seen before – the Novelty Effect. Present at the Creation It was early 1991 and Apple’s software development team was hard at work on QuickTime , the first multimedia framework for a computer. It was fun watching it happen.

Video 190

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 190

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

In previous posts I’ve talked about what the combination of Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Methodologies mean to startups and intrapreneurs in large companies; it’s the beginning of entrepreneurship as a science with its own rules and methodologies. She posted her notes from the talk here.)

Customer Development 278

Customer Development Business Model Developer Design 278

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

The news from customers was not good. The Nine Teams Present. The feedback from the teaching team “great Pivot&# and very clear Lessons Learned presentation. They then did face-to-face interviews with 20 customers and got data from 36 more who fit their archetype. Let the real learning begin. Keep at it.

Customer 241

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 241

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