Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2013

The class has talked to 1,440 customers to date.). The teams present what they learned talking to 10-15 customer/week, and get comments, suggestions and critiques from their teaching team. It turns out that for commercialization, the business model (Customers, Channel, Revenue Model, etc.) Therapeutics (Starting at 0:30).

Lean 267

Lean Customer Business Model Customer Development 267

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

Freshman Salesman writes: I’ve read somewhere in your blog about how you had a very large organisation as the first customer for your software. I’m putting myself in the same boat now with the solution I’m developing so could you tell me: 1. How did you reach out to your first customer? I think you meant this

Customer 231

Customer Software Review IP Technical Review 231

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 323

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 323

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Part 1: Bend, Oregon Ecosystem and Entrepreneurs. Success depends on finding startups that have identified acute customer pains in large markets where conditions are ripe for a new entrant. Few entrepreneurs find this scalable and repeatable business model because it’s not easy. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds.

Early Stage 295

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 295

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

In my 21 years as an entrepreneur, I would come up for air once a month to religiously read the Harvard Business Review. 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. ” Groucho Marx.

Technical Review 331

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 331

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. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

Lean 264

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 264

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 322

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 322

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

I originally conceived it as the Top 11 things that I believe “all entrepreneurs need to succeed.&# If it stuck to this theme then I would stand by my top 11. It isn’t a “must&# for me but it’s certainly a huge positive when entrepreneurs have it. So the whole customer development cycle is very streamlined.

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

. - 500 Hats , July 30, 2010 Kathy Sierra at Business of Software 2009 - Business of Software Blog , May 4, 2010 Customer Development Checklist for My Web Startup – Part 1 - Ash Maurya , February 16, 2010 How-to learn about angel/vc term sheets - Gabriel Weinberg , June 28, 2010 Why Every Entrepreneur Should Write and 9 Tips To Get Started - OnStartups (..)

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

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

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

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 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. The 47th (-46) Annual Business Model Competition.

Business Model 286

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 286

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

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Since every situation is unique, there is no perfect solution to any engineering, customer or competitor problem, and you shouldn’t agonize over trying to find one. An example of a reversible decision could be adding a product feature, a new algorithm in the code, targeting a specific set of customers, etc.

Silicon Valley 310

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 310

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

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

DECEMBER 20, 2011

63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks , turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. I remember thinking, “Wow, whoever’s on the other end of phone sounds just like an entrepreneur, they were asking for the impossible.” Over the last two months the U.S. This week we saw the results.

Incubator 311

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 311

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

I spent the month of September lecturing, and interacting with (literally) thousands of entrepreneurs in two emerging startup markets, Finland and Russia. What I found in Finland was: a whole lot of smart, passionate entrepreneurs who want to build a startup hub in Helsinki.

Finland 329

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 329

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2010

The company loses customers, then revenues and profits decline and it eventually gets acquired or goes out of business. If you’re an entrepreneur, you spend your time worrying about how to get out of the box on the left and move to the right. valued by their existing customers – fairly well. Creative Destruction.

Search 251

Search Agile Customer Development Technical Review 251

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

In my 21 years as an entrepreneur, I would come up for air once a month to religiously read the Harvard Business Review. 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. ” Groucho Marx.

Technical Review 223

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 223

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

MAY 29, 2011

A big piece of the solution lies in the scalable impact of entrepreneurship and an increase of successful entrepreneurs. Max continued, “That’s why I’m really interested in ways of optimizing the entrepreneurship ecosystem to allow more entrepreneurs to go from idea to reality. I was feeling pretty old.

Technical Cofounder 335

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 335

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 9, 2013

by Tom Panaggio, author of “ The Risk Advantage: Embracing the Entrepreneur’s Unexpected Edge “ Here’s one of business’s dirty little secrets: Many business owners prefer to keep their customers at arm’s length. If you lose a customer due to price or other circumstances beyond your control, then fine.

Customer 170

Customer Technical Review Florida Cofounder 170

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Entrepreneurs in Beijing were knowledgeable about Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship and the state of software and tools available for two reasons. Almost every entrepreneur I met was using VPN to circumvent the Great Firewall. There’s a noticeable lack of tenacity in young, new entrepreneurs. Perhaps it’s the weather. In the U.S.

China 329

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 329

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2010

It’s the combination of Business Model Design and Customer Development. Business Model Design Gets Dynamic, Customer Development Gets Strategic. One of the key tenets of Customer Development is that your business model is nothing more than a set of untested hypotheses. Business Model Design.

Customer Development 333

Customer Development Business Model Developer Customer 333

Steve Blank

APRIL 19, 2010

The question is whether you are born with innate entrepreneurial talent or whether you can be taught to operate like an entrepreneur. Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Jason Calacanis , founder of Mahlo.com, and Mark Suster of GRP Partners, have all weighed in on the nature side – you’re born being an entrepreneur or your not.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley Venture Capital China New York 235

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

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

When it comes to being an entrepreneur, establishing a personal brand through a website is critical to success. If you want to compete with them, you’re going to have to develop a reputation and a strong web presence yourself. Here’s the entrepreneur’s guide to getting your first website off the ground. Custom development.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. Two paragraphs, Five bullets. It didn’t take more.

Silicon Valley 272

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 272

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Experienced entrepreneurs We’ve got speakers who are justifiably respected by a lot of entrepreneurs. Another way to learn more about who’s speaking is to sort the conference program by category and find people addressing specific topics. For example: Mitch Kapor was a founder of Lotus.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

One of the attributes of great entrepreneurs is that they are tenacious and relentless. Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. Here’s our story: We started like most entrepreneurs — an idea, an opportunity, and very little money.

Customer Development 231

Customer Development Developer Customer California 231

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

He was a life-long entrepreneur and the first business he created out of college (actually, he founded it while he was at Caltech) was a company that manufactured high quality audio speakers. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

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.

Customer Development 256

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 256

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2019

They have a unique insight about the nature of interactions between customers and service providers I’ve never heard before. If they are correct, they’ve found a unique combination of customers and value proposition that made these customers want to immediately pay and repeatably engage. Why did those fail?

Bandwidth 303

Bandwidth Database Venture Capital Demand 303

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

I don’t recommend anyone become an entrepreneur. The tools and temperament needed to get from startup idea to startup success were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Jeremy dropped out of Princeton to become an entrepreneur. Wanting to create impact is great. It’s too hard.

Cofounder 147

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 147

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 418

Lean Security Asia SBIR 418