Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

While our teams have mentors, socialize a lot and give great demos, the goal of our class final presentations is “ Lessons Learned ” – about product/market fit, pricing, acquisition/activation costs, pricing, partners, etc. 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

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

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 266

Lean Customer Business Model Customer Development 266

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 261

San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 261

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

Each sale requires us to handhold the customer and takes way too long to close. He took a deep breath, looked around the boardroom table and then proceeded to outline a radical reconfiguration of the product line (repackaging the products rather than reengineering them) and a change in sales strategy, focusing on a different customer segment.

Business Model 335

Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 335

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? —— When I wrote Four Steps to the Epiphany and the Startup Owners Manual , I believed that Life Sciences startups didn’t need Customer Discovery. used to serve those customers.

SBIR 321

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 321

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

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards. So when he saw the browser it instantly dawned on him that this would be the greatest customer development tool ever. This has been their formula for nearly 15 years.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

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

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. How do I sort out what to do?”.

Marketing 318

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 318

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. 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.). ——-.

Early Stage 295

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 295

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. The “it” is a physical or web product they’ve often been locked-down, pounding away at, for many weeks. Dropbox is a great example.

Startup 334

Startup Cofounder Customer Development Viral 334

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. gather data essential to customer partnerships/collaboration/purchases before doing the science.

Lean 277

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development 277

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 307

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 307

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

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. It Seems Logical.

Part-Time VPE 325

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 325

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 287

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 287

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

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

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. Business Model Versus Business Plan.

Business Model 285

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 285

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. After returning to their schools, they got out of their labs while they built their products.

Incubator 310

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 310

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 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

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

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 286

Lean Customer Development Business Model Email 286

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. Part 1 outlining the program is here.

Programming 273

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 273

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2012

Customer Validation. We had closed four $100,000 deals for our customer relationship management software. He had just demo’d our product to his friend, the CFO of Autodesk. He had just demo’d our product to his friend, the CFO of Autodesk. Autodesk became our third paying customer. Don’t pull out.

Forecast 299

Forecast Sales Matching Customer Development 299

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2013

Qualcomm’s visionary CEO, Paul Jacobs , wanted to use internal Qualcomm ideas to find breakthrough innovation that could be turned into products, (not simply a suggestion box for creative thoughts or improving sustaining innovation.) He gave my innovation team free reign on designing a new employee innovation program.

Programming 301

Programming Design Lean Seed Money 301

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. Personalized – job is relevant to personal needs.

Employee 282

Employee Matching Customer Leadership 282

Steve Blank

JULY 24, 2012

I Know A Great Customer. And along with that first customer hypothesis I had the brilliant hypothesis that my channel partner should be Onyx. I thought, “If they already selling to the sales department Epiphany’s products could easily be cross-sold to the marketing department.”. But I didn’t realize that at the time.

Seattle 265

Seattle Cofounder Engineer Sales 265

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2013

Qualcomm’s visionary CEO, Paul Jacobs , wanted to use internal Qualcomm ideas to find breakthrough innovation that could be turned into products, (not simply a suggestion box for creative thoughts or improving sustaining innovation.) He gave my innovation team free reign on designing a new employee innovation program.

Programming 293

Programming Design Lean Seed Money 293

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. If they were a commercial company, they figured out product/market fit; or if a government organization, it focused on solution/mission fit. Process Versus Product.

Government 322

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 322

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 328

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 328

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.

Marketing 234

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Social Network 234