SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 19, 2012

This should be an iterative process with advisors and customers providing feedback on the product. Conversations with a technical advisors or possible developers should be iterative. Customer Development Notes I'm assuming founders are having customer development conversations. Don't stress over format.

Developer 354

Developer Technical Review Fractional CTO Software Review 354

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 5, 2013

We think teaching teams a formal methodology around the Lean Framework (Business Model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) is a natural evolution of how successful incubators/accelerators will build startups. Given something tangible, customers were able to start gauging their willingness to use and pay.

Lean 322

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 322

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

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. 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.

Technical Review 331

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 331

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

I was having breakfast with Radhika, an ex-grad student of mine who wanted to share her Customer Discovery progress for her consumer hardware startup. Activities define the unique expertise your company needs to deliver the value proposition, customers, channels, customer relationships and/or revenue. (If Customer Development'

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 21, 2013

Startup Tools here Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching , Venture Capital. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching Venture Capital' You can follow the talk along using the slides below. If you can’t see the slides above, click here. Additional videos here.

Video 288

Video Oakland Lean Venture Capital 288

Steve Blank

AUGUST 21, 2013

—— When I wrote Four Steps to the Epiphany and the Startup Owners Manual , I believed that Life Sciences startups didn’t need Customer Discovery. For example when one team found the right customer, they changed the core technology (the basis of their original idea!) used to serve those customers.

SBIR 321

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 321

View from Seed

OCTOBER 22, 2015

Customer development” has become its own skill and body of knowledge, and there are some crucial nuances to understand up front before beginning your customer dev discussions. Talk and listen to customers instead. The gut reaction for many people is to approach customer research through some sort of survey methodology.

Customer Development 120

Customer Development Developer Customer Seed Stage 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Success depends on finding startups that have identified acute customer pains in large markets where conditions are ripe for a new entrant. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Science and Industrial Policy , Venture Capital. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Science and Industrial Policy Venture Capital'

Early Stage 295

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 295

Steve Blank

JUNE 19, 2014

110 researchers and clinicians, and Principal Investigators got out of the lab and hospital, and talked to 2,355 customers, tested 947 hypotheses and invalidated 423 of them. clinical utility, customer, quality of data, reimbursement, what parts of the product are valuable, roles of CRO’s , and partners, etc.,)

Lean 277

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development 277

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012

Either way, the “hurdle” for successful, scalable startups is high, and it gets higher every day as customer acquisition challenges continue to increase. There’s just no other way but, as Steve Blank has said for a decade, to “get out of the building” and talk to the only folks who matter—your customers. Dropbox is a great example.

Startup 334

Startup Cofounder Customer Development Viral 334

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

The way our process worked, customers were just a stakeholder that provided input – not drivers of the process. 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. Doing it Wrong. Back to the Present.

Lean 271

Lean Technical Review Acquisition Software Review 271

Steve Blank

JANUARY 2, 2014

Doctors, researchers and Principal Investigators in this class got out of the lab and hospital talked to 2,355 customers, tested 947 hypotheses and invalidated 423 of them. Part 4: This Will Save us Years – Customer Discovery in Medical Devices. Part 5: Value proposition and customer segments in Life Sciences.

Lean 250

Lean Algorithm Customer Development IP 250

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

I was having coffee with the CEO of a new startup, listening to her puzzle through how to communicate to potential customers. I reminded her that all the Lean tools she learned in class–Customer Discovery, business model and value proposition canvases– contained her answer. Painful and invaluable” was her reply. Here’s how.

Marketing 318

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 318

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' Torch was the rare government program that was run like a startup – iterating and pivoting as it learned and discovered.

Programming 287

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 287

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 12, 2012

Filed under: Customer Development. Thanks to: Alexis Finch, Sketchnotes / UX Research Consultant @agentfin.

Customer Development 317

Customer Development Developer Customer 317

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2012

When Bob Dorf and I wrote the Startup Owners Manual we listed a series of Customer Development principles. Pair Customer Development with Agile Development. No Business Plan Survives First Contact with Customers. So by popular demand, here’s a poster of the Customer Development Manifesto.

Customer Development 331

Customer Development Developer Customer Cofounder 331

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks , turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. And since the rest of the slides were about Customer Development, I taught those.

Incubator 310

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 310

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

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. Teams talk to 10-15 customers a week and make a minimum of 100 customer visits.

Intellectual Property 290

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 290

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. To say it’s a tough class is an understatement.

Lean 286

Lean Customer Development Business Model Email 286

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2012

Wrote technical manuals and taught microprocessor design (to customers who knew more than I did.) Worked weeks non-stop responding to customer Requests For Proposals (RFP’s.) In the sprint to first customer ship, slept under the desk in my office the same nights my engineering team was doing the same.

Thailand 334

Thailand Engineer Customer Development SEO 334

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

- SoCal CTO , January 13, 2010 5 Lessons from 150 startup pitches - A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks , July 11, 2010 9 Reasons Why Many Smart People Go Nowhere - Life Beyond Code , March 29, 2010 No Accounting For Startups - Steve Blank , February 22, 2010 Startup Advice In Exactly Three Words - #StartupTriplets - OnStartups , January (..)

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. The country needs to figure out a long term privatization strategy for Venture investing. Finnish culture makes risk-taking and sharing hard.

Finland 332

Finland Naming Russia Government 332

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

With hindsight we should have had “proof of concepts” tested in a corporate center (think ‘pop-up incubator’) where they would do extensive Customer Discovery. Doing so meant they would have to take risks for IP acquisition and customer/market risks outside their experience or comfort zone.

Programming 273

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 273

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

We found 4 different major groups of startups that all have very different behavior regarding customer acquisition, time, product, market and team. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. And they’re just getting started. Congratulations. Download the full Startup Genome report here.

Technical Cofounder 335

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2014

Over 44 classes have embedded the business model canvas and/or Customer Discovery including a year-long course taken by every single one of its bioengineering majors. 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.

Maryland 280

Maryland Lean DC Virginia 280

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Technology , Venture Capital. The number of serial entrepreneurs is very low and until recently most of the talented sales and marketing professionals choose to work for Nokia.

Finland 329

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 329

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2013

In hindsight we were having our employees get out of the building to talk to customers, build prototypes and generate partner interest – essentially doing Customer Discovery years before Steve Blank taught his Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford and the National Science Foundation!).

Programming 301

Programming Design Lean Seed Money 301

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2013

In hindsight we were having our employees get out of the building to talk to customers, build prototypes and generate partner interest – essentially doing Customer Discovery years before Steve Blank taught his Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford and the National Science Foundation!).

Programming 293

Programming Design Lean Seed Money 293

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2012

Customer Validation. We had closed four $100,000 deals for our customer relationship management software. It took weeks or months for Sales to get financial, sales results and customer reports from IT. Autodesk became our third paying customer. Filed under: Customer Development , E.piphany , Marketing.

Forecast 299

Forecast Sales Matching Customer Development 299

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

I pointed out that the “data” you gather in 10 weeks (talking to 100+ customers, partners, payers, etc.,) Now that you’ve gotten to know your potential channel and customers, regardless of how much money you’re going to make, will you enjoy working with these customers for the next 3 or 4 years? see 0:30 in the video below).

Cofounder 330

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 330

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' They are the signs of a leadership frightened not by external enemies but by their own people. It usually doesn’t end well.

China 328

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 328

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 25, 2023

A common initiative I hear from business owners today is their effort to improve the customer experience. To achieve real growth, business leaders need to improve both employee as well as customer experiences. Flexible – listen to allow flex hours and customization. Proactive – timely communication to build trust.

Employee 282

Employee Matching Customer Leadership 282

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

This person may be an extraordinary communicator, who rallies employees, customers, and colleagues around the vivid future he sees. What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers.

CTO Hire 252

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 252

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? See here for an extended discussion of remote customer discovery.).

Lean 417

Lean Security Asia SBIR 417

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. This is often B2C because the value is in quantity of customers, and there’s 100x more consumers than businesses. $1/mo simple enough to be self-service). Even bootstrapped businesses can make this work (e.g.

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294