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

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Oh, and we had no installed customer base. I had hired the VP of marketing from a potential software partner who was responsible to get all this 3 rd party software on our computer. In reality we hadn’t gotten any closer to our goal than the day we hired him. We had accomplished nothing – zero, zilch, nada.

Silicon Valley 332

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 332

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

While the last post was titled “ You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When They Offer You a Job “, this post should probably be titled, “You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When You Offer Them a Job.&#

Engineer 224

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 224

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

This week they were testing who the customer, user, payer for the product will be (and discovering if they have a multi-sided business model , one with both buyers and sellers.) The news from customers was not good. talk to more customers? Which value added services do public clouds want to attract customers for?

Customer 241

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 241

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 263

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 263

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

It should talk about how many customers you think you will acquire and how much you’ll charge for your product. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? I care about the thought that you’ve given to the customer problem.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

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

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. it is an art) and again hired professionals. Some men see things as they are and ask why.

Agile 334

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 334

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

The benefits of customer and agile development and minimum features set are continuous customer feedback, rapid iteration and little wasted code. But over time if developers aren’t careful, code written to find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling.

Part-Time VPE 325

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 325

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

They provide consulting, promotion, product testing, hiring, training and incubation services to startups. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' Technology Business Incubators (TBIs).

Programming 287

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 287

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. He just hired Meg Whitman.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

by Bill Lee, author of “ The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of Your Most Important Asset “. Talented product developers. No one can truly understand your customers or genuinely share their interests unless she is a customer herself. Your most powerful growth engine is your existing customer.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

They’ve stopped hiring the best talent, and startups are not looking so risky compared to large companies. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. Nokia was blind-sided in a classic disruptive innovation. Nanny-Culture, Lack of Risk Taking, Not Sharing.

Finland 332

Finland Naming Russia Government 332

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. In ten years, from the early 1950′s to the early 1960′s, the valley went through a hiring frenzy as jobs in microwave companies went from 700 to 7,000.

Silicon Valley 302

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 302

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

You’re Hired, You’re Fired. My first job in Silicon Valley: I was hired as a lab technician at ESL to support the training department. The manager of the training department who hired you wasn’t authorized to do so – and he’s been fired. Could I work here if he wanted to hire me?&#

Agile 269

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 269

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Customer/Market Risk Versus Invention Risk One day I was having lunch with a VC sharing what I learned from my students. Our firm has a portfolio of companies across a broad range of markets and the way we look at it is pretty simple – the deals fall into two types: those with customer/market risk and those with invention risk.”

Vertical 167

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 167

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

But underlying the company’s existence was a fundamental hypothesis we refused to see or test - customers would care if we did. Our potential customers didn’t seem to be calling for Hollywood stories, characters and narrative. Successful pinball companies didn’t hire Hollywood talent. That’s OK, because we knew better.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 223

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

At Tekes, government employees (and their hired consultants) – with no equity, no risk or reward, no startup or venture capital experience – try to pick startup winners and losers. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Technology , Venture Capital.

Finland 329

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 329

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. And all of that cost was caused by one activity: hiring. Hiring is no different from any other company process. Sounds a little abstract, though, doesnt it?

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. They’ve tested their hypotheses with literally hundreds of customer interviews on every continent in the world. Corporate elephants can dance.

Silicon Valley 239

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 239

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. They are gaining valuable customer data.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 17, 2010

After all: Tech support deals with insane customers. Tech support keeps angry customers at bay while having no power to effect change. For most of your customers, tech support is the only human interaction they'll have with you. Enabling your customers isn't just about your product , but rather your entire company.

Technical Review 245

Technical Review Sales Turkey Software Review 245

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers.

Technology 145

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 145

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

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

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

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 244

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

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. We hired union laborers to do that. Two paragraphs, Five bullets.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

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 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2012

by Bill Lee, author of “ The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of Your Most Important Asset “. It’s hard to believe these are the methods and tools of a profession designed to attract and persuade us to become customers — especially when “we the buyers” increasingly ignore them. Pushy salespeople.

Marketing 234

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Social Network 234

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. I was hired as a training instructor to teach microprocessor system design for the existing Z-80 family and to write a new course for Zilog’s soon to be launched 16-bit processor, the Z-8000. Life was good. Where Am I?

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 206

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 26, 2009 A real Customer Advisory Board A reader recently asked on a previous post about the technique of having customers periodically produce a “state of the company&# progress report. Many companies seek to involve customers directly in the creation of their products.

Advisory Board 151

Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' It usually doesn’t end well.

China 328

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 328

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# Let’s begin with the four customer currencies. And this is true outside of games.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

They provide consulting, promotion, product testing, hiring, training and incubation services to startups. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' Technology Business Incubators (TBIs).

Programming 179

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 179

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Here are just a few things you might look for: Reducing risk in young companies Bringing innovation to the enterprise Designing and running experiments Customer development strategies All conference passes are on sale right now, and you can compare them here.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Once upon a time every great organization was a scrappy startup willing to take risks – new ideas, new methods, new customers, targets, and mission. This typically plays out in three ways: Often the first plan from leadership for innovation is hiring management consultants who bring out their 20th-century playbook.

Government 322

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 322

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168