This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how SiliconValley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how SiliconValley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. How did SiliconValley start?
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.
I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the CustomerDevelopment model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” It’s an impressive portfolio.
This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the CustomerDevelopment Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.
CustomerDevelopment 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 CustomerDevelopment.
Two methods, Design Thinking and CustomerDevelopment (the core of the Lean Startup) provide the tactical day-to-day process of how to turn ideas into products. . While they both emphasize getting out of the building and taking to customers, they’re not the same.
I asked Tsutsumi-san to write a guest post for my blog to describe his experience with CustomerDevelopment in Japan. After waiting for a week or so for the book to make it to Japan, I was very much shocked how impressed I was by the CustomerDevelopment Model detailed in the book. ————-.
—————- The next piece of the Secret History of SiliconValley 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. What Does WWII Have to Do with SiliconValley?
These four developments, while important to SiliconValley, are vital to developing regional tech clusters. While the density of SiliconValley startups can’t be replicated in regions, the barriers of money and resources have disappeared. Why Valley Rules Don’t Work in Regional Economies.
For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of CustomerDevelopment , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The CustomerDevelopment process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.
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 + CustomerDevelopment. Heck, in SiliconValley even the waiters can do it.). One of the problems they run into is building a web site.
CustomerDevelopment We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in SiliconValley 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.”
to make sense of the unstructured feedback received from customers. Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building. Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. Now In Print!
We taught them the business model / customerdevelopment / agile development solution stack. This methodology forces rapid hypothesis testing and CustomerDevelopment by getting out of the building while building the product. After 7 weeks they returned to SiliconValley for their final presentations.
Technical Marketing Years later in my career I would realize I had simply reinvented what the early pioneers in SiliconValley knew and did – hiring engineers who were domain experts who could talk as peers to customers and communicate effectively with their own company’s engineers. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.
Therefore we needed them to think and learn about two parts of a startup; 1) ideation - how to create new ideas and 2) customerdevelopment – how do they test the validity of their idea (is it the right product, customer, channel, pricing, etc.). Hawken students practicing Customer Discovery in a mall.
PS1- I run a small software startup in Brazil and just found out about CustomerDevelopment and your blog (I’ve been reading and listening to everything I can get my hands on online, like Venturehacks and Ries’ blog). Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. Order Here. Now In Print!
The CustomerDevelopment process is the way startups quickly iterate and test each element of their business model , reducing customer and market risk. The first step of CustomerDevelopment is called Customer Discovery. outside the building and test them in front of customers.
CustomerDevelopment ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. CustomerDevelopment) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. In a startup it doesn’t matter if you’re 100% right 100% of the time.
Examples are Hollywood for movies, Milan for fashion, New York for finance and today, SiliconValley for technology entrepreneurship. It has become China’s SiliconValley. Filed under: China , CustomerDevelopment , Technology , Venture Capital. China CustomerDevelopment Technology Venture Capital'
My first job in SiliconValley: I was hired as a lab technician at ESL to support the training department. It makes you appreciate that the SiliconValley technology-centric culture-bubble has little to do with the majority of Americans.) You’re Hired, You’re Fired. Driving across the U.S. I was stunned.
But for the last decade “innovation” in Chinese software meant something different than it did in SiliconValley. Entrepreneurs in Beijing were knowledgeable about SiliconValley, entrepreneurship and the state of software and tools available for two reasons. Of course “copy” is too strong a word. Management 101.
As I was reading a history of the startup years of Fairchild Semiconductor , I realized that a problem I thought was new – sales as an obstacle to Pivots – had occurred 50 years ago at the dawn of what would become SiliconValley. —— Every chip company in SiliconValley is descended from Fairchild.
November 23, 2010 Entrepreneurs, Using Outsourcing to Obtain Capital Efficiency Needs to be Thought Through to be Effective - Robert Ochtel , June 7, 2010 Teen Entrepreneur, Brian Wong, Youngest Founder to Receive Angel Funding - teenentrepreneurblog.com , October 28, 2010 Build Your Own SiliconValley?
Filed under: CustomerDevelopment , Venture Capital | Tagged: Entrepreneurs « CustomerDevelopment Manifesto: Market Type (part 4) CustomerDevelopment 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. .&#
Convergent Technologies When I was in my 20’s I worked at Convergent Technologies , a company that was proud to be known as the “Marine Corps of SiliconValley.” Filed under: CustomerDevelopment , Family/Career , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Tips for Startups « Am I a Founder?
Only in SiliconValley could we have got funded with this idea, and not surprisingly, it was our technology that had the VC’s confused. CustomerDevelopment There was nothing wrong about Rocket Science having a vision radically different than the conventional wisdom. Make sure they are. Order Here. Now In Print!
The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or CustomerDevelopment. Reply Dan Hodgins , on November 13, 2009 at 1:12 am Said: Hi Steve, Just listened to your “Retooling Early Stage Development&# for about the 10th time tonight as I was cleaning my room. Your results may vary.
Hitting “burnout” changed the trajectory of both ends of my career in SiliconValley. Zilog Zilog was my first SiliconValley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. Recovery That weekend I left the Valley and drove along the coast from San Francisco to Monterey. The bill had come due.
This is a customerdevelopment 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.
Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. Filed under: SuperMac | Tagged: Early Stage Startup , Steve Blank « There’s a Pattern Here SuperMac War Story 2: Facts Exist Outside the Building, Opinions Reside Within – So Get the Hell Outside the Building » Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply.
Two years out of the Air Force, serendipity (which would be my lifelong form of career planning) found me in SiliconValley working for my first company: ESL. If you are a practitioner of CustomerDevelopment, ESL was doing it before most us were born. Fred Terman Sent Us In 1953 the U.S.
Here’s the course announcement from Professor Vergara (in English): CustomerDevelopment Course in Chile – Lean Launchpad. The objective of this course is that groups of students finish with a completed software product that has real customers and an identified market.
CustomerDevelopment/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 CustomerDevelopment describes. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford.
Filed under: CustomerDevelopment , Family/Career , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Startups , Early Stage Startup , Tips for Startups « The Curse of a New Building Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters – Part 1 » 33 Responses William , on May 18, 2009 at 5:44 am Said: Heh. Order Here.
Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog. I feel that I’ve derived as much value from this post as I would from reading 2 or 3 lengthy books on the topic. Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!
New strategic direction in companies with loyal customers have different consequences then when you had no customers Acquiring new customers are a lot more expensive that converting existing ones. Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. on July 9, 2010 at 12:50 pm Said: [.] Order Here.
However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a CustomerDevelopment process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model. Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. You’re not joining a big company.
Filed under: CustomerDevelopment , Marketing , SuperMac , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , SuperMac « Love/Hate Business Plan Competitions Gravity Will be Turned Off » 17 Responses EricS , on May 11, 2009 at 11:05 am Said: I loved my Spigot. Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice.
The percentage of marketing departments to live in the ivory tower rather than get out to meet with customers has got to be staggeringly high. Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Blog at WordPress.com.
The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the CustomerDevelopment process are you on? CustomerDevelopment and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back. Order Here.
But he left to work on what he told me he came to do - crack the innovation code of SiliconValley and share it with the rest of the world. Filed under: CustomerDevelopment , Teaching , Venture Capital. (He was part of the Sandbox network - a group of incredibly smart under 30 year olds.). Congratulations.
He’s as good as any startup CEO in SiliconValley. Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace CustomerDevelopment (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. Corporate elephants can dance. So why this post? They will build the sales team that follows.
Thirty plus years ago when I came to SiliconValley Asian’s and Indian’s in high technology were a small minority and almost none were running companies or in venture capital. Today SiliconValley, New York and Boston, are magnets for entrepreneurs in the U.S. Nature Versus Nurture versus Culture?
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 5,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
Let's personalize your content