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

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. Frank Robinson of SyncDev has been helping companies figure out their minimum viable product and pivots since 1984, long before I even knew what it meant.

San Jose 262

San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 262

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2010

I was having coffee with a former student who was complained that my idea of building a first product release with a minimum feature set was a bad idea. 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.).

Customer Development 313

Customer Development Business Model Developer Search 313

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

To fill this gap I wrote The Four Steps to the Epiphany , a book about the Customer Development process and how it changes the way startups are built. Eric Ries, who took my first Customer Development class at Berkeley, had the insight that Customer Development should be paired with Agile Development.

Technical Review 331

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 331

Steve Blank

AUGUST 21, 2013

What if we could increase productivity and stave the capital flight by helping Life Sciences startups build their companies more efficiently? Quite a few of the teams were building biotech, devices or digital health products. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Science and Industrial Policy , Teaching.

SBIR 322

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 322

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

While most of the early attention in a startup is paid to finding product market fit ( the match between value proposition and customer segment on the right-side of the canvas) it’s the left side of the canvas that will tell you what your founding team should look like. Filed under: Customer Development.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

The cloud , open-source development tools and web 2.0 Startups still need capital to scale once they find good product-market fit and a repeatable-scalable business model.). Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Science and Industrial Policy , Venture Capital. Valley-sized VC funds don’t work.

Early Stage 295

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 295

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. Even if they did, what if the assumption – that we had developed a better approach to teaching entrepreneurship – was simply mistaken?

Lean 308

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 308

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

A business plan is the execution document that large companies write when planning product-line extensions where customer, market and product features are known. Most startups are facing unknown customer needs, an unknown product feature set and is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

Business Plan 320

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 320

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

The Torch program created Innovation Clusters by creating national Science and Technology Industrial Parks (STIPs), Software Parks, and Productivity Promotion Centers. It did so by building a national network of a 1,000+ Productivity Promotion Centers. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

Programming 288

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 288

Steve Blank

JUNE 19, 2014

After seeing the process work so well for scientists and engineers in the NSF, we hypothesized that we could increase productivity and stave the capital flight by helping Life Sciences startups build their companies more efficiently. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Life Sciences , National Science Foundation.

Lean 277

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development 277

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Some really great stuff in 2010 that aims to help startups around product, technology, business models, etc.

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

This startup search process is the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. The traditional business plan is an essential organizing and planning document to launch new products in existing companies with known customers and markets. Business Model Versus Business Plan.

Business Model 286

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 286

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. And since the rest of the slides were about Customer Development, I taught those.

Incubator 311

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 311

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

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. We’ve pivoted our Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum.

Intellectual Property 291

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 291

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

To fill this gap I wrote The Four Steps to the Epiphany , a book about the Customer Development process and how it changes the way startups are built. Eric Ries, who took my first Customer Development class at Berkeley, had the insight that Customer Development should be paired with Agile Development.

Technical Review 223

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 223

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

more likely to successfully scale with sales driven startups than with product centric startups. more likely to successfully scale with product-centric startups with no network effects than with product-centric startups that have network effects. Founders overestimate the value of IP before product market fit by 255%. .

Technical Cofounder 335

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

It was only after returning to Stanford and taking the Lean Launchpad class that I became convinced that a radically different, customer-centric approach was the solution. I returned to the Air Force Academy as an instructor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, intent on spreading the gospel of Customer Development and Lean.

Lean 271

Lean Technical Review Acquisition Software Review 271

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

Our Lean LaunchPad class requires student teams to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week while they’re building the product. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching' Here’s why. It washes out the others.

Lean 287

Lean Customer Development Business Model Email 287

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2013

Therapeutics Validation = 18 months to a first deal with a potential customer – well before FDA trials, and even before preclinical stage. Digital Health Customer = typically consumer end users. Medical Device customers = short term: physicians in private practice and hospital, long term: medical device companies.

Lean 267

Lean Customer Business Model Customer Development 267

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2012

My startup career started on the bottom, installing process control equipment inside auto assembly plants and steel mills (in awe of the complexity of the systems that delivered finished products.) Wrote technical manuals and taught microprocessor design (to customers who knew more than I did.) Great careers start by peeling potatoes.

Thailand 334

Thailand Engineer Customer Development SEO 334

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2012

He had just demo’d our product to his friend, the CFO of Autodesk. After seeing the demo, the CFO walked Joe over to the office of Autodesk’s VP of sales, and said to her, “I think this product might solve your sales reporting problem.”. Filed under: Customer Development , E.piphany , Marketing.

Forecast 300

Forecast Sales Matching Customer Development 300

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

product that barely worked, no sales organization (except tech support, which often works better anyway ), and I just hoped they’d run a credit card. The contract says you retain the IP and are allowed to sell a product like this to other companies. You build the product, then you have your banner customer and go get others.

Customer 231

Customer Software Review IP Technical Review 231

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Small startups act the same way, simply cloning each other’s products. Perhaps products like WeChat , designed for an international market, might be the beginning of real innovation. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

China 329

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 329

View from Seed

DECEMBER 8, 2015

Editor’s note: At a recent team meeting at NextView, we looked at the high number of startups we invested in which were pre-product at the time. The question arose: What is a seed VC’s process like when a company is pre-product? A big chunk of our investments at NextView have been made pre-product.

Product 120

Product Startup Early Stage Seed Capital 120

Steve Blank

JULY 24, 2012

I thought, “If they already selling to the sales department Epiphany’s products could easily be cross-sold to the marketing department.”. I outlined how our two products could be technically integrated together, how they could make much more money selling both and why it was a great deal for both companies. It’s Only a Month of Work.

Seattle 266

Seattle Cofounder Engineer Sales 266

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

He’s a founder of Andreessen Horowitz, which has backed Facebook, Skype, Jawbone, and dozens of other companies whose products you use. And the whole site was developed in just 9 weeks. Ben Horowitz ’s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things is driving the conversation around startup management this year. Eric Ries will interview him.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 25, 2023

For example, many companies are fighting the remote work trend by bringing team members back to the office where they can better focus together on improving customer experience. Make people feel more productive by providing continuous feedback on work accomplished, process improvements, and current training.

Employee 282

Employee Matching Customer Leadership 282

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. Price is as important as any other feature to determine product/market “fit.” ” How many times have you seen someone struggle with an inferior product because they cannot afford the better one? .”

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. Many of them get hung up on understanding how to select the right minimal viable product. Your mission is your baby.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2019

I just spent half a day with Henrich, the head of product of a Fortune 10 company. We’re helping them convert one of the critical product lines inside an existing division from a traditional waterfall project management process into Lean. This product line has 15 project managers overseeing 60 projects. All good Lean basics.

Agile 65

Agile Lean Leadership Conversion 65

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2014

By exploring customer service initiatives, new sales channels, and private label financing, to name a few, you can attract and keep new customers. Improve the Customer Experience. Without quality customer service, people won’t want to buy your products or use your services.

Customer 168

Customer PPC Software Review Finance 168

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

And to today, when its major product is simply innovation. When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions and even billions of users can happen in years versus decades. The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle.

Restful 249

Restful Silicon Valley San Jose Puerto Rico 249

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.”. Repeat, learning whether to iterate, pivot or restart until you have something that customers love. Waterfall Development. Here’s how.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

– while simultaneously building a series of minimal viable products. Unlike traditional demo days or Shark Tanks which are, “Here’s how smart I am, and isn’t this a great product, please give me money,” a Lessons Learned presentation tells the story of a team’s 10-week journey and hard-won learning and discovery.

Lean 418

Lean Security Asia SBIR 418

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Creators of new products in environments of extreme uncertainty, startups face enormous risks. Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. As a startup owner, what can you do to improve your chances?

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Steve Blank

MAY 19, 2021

The key to understanding value propositions is in building interviews that are based on a set of hypotheses (about the problem, the stakeholder and potential solutions to be explored) and data to be captured while using minimum viable products (just enough “product” to increase the efficacy of a conversation and increase the speed of learning).

Curation 354

Curation Technical Review Lean Australia 354