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 309

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 309

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 7, 2009

I think customer feedback comes in a very unstructured manner, hence it is difficult to apply an algorithm on it. to make sense of the unstructured feedback received from customers. luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building. Order Here. Now In Print!

Customer Development 129

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 129

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

In this time, building a successful business meant building a company that had paying customers quarter after quarter. It did not mean building a startup into a company to flip or hype on the market with no earnings or revenue, but building a company that had paying customers. They taught you about customers, markets and profits.

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Our first question was, did the total number of customers that had already bought products from our competitors and us represent a saturated market or the tip of the iceberg? Since I was heading a marketing department, not acting as an individual contributor, I needed to teach all of marketing the importance of customer data.

Silicon Valley 150

Silicon Valley Customer RSS Philippines 150

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

And I got to experience a type of customer buying behavior I had never seen before – the Novelty Effect. People who aren’t current customers of our graphics boards will get to know our company and brand. All we had to do was tell customers they could get video into their computer – and not promise anything else.

Video 190

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 190

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Or offer some real insights into our customers? It wasn’t a lack of competence or skill in her job; it was just that as far as she was concerned, her job had no connection to the rest of marketing, our customers or our ultimate success as a company. “We Was she going to propose a coherent communications strategy?

Silicon Valley 213

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 213

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 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Luckily while I was teaching classes at headquarters, Zilog’s field application engineers (the technical engineers working alongside our salesmen) would work side-by-side with our large customers as they designed their systems with our chips. Customers The irony is that Zilog had no idea who would eventually become its largest customers.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 206

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a Customer Development process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model.

Cofounder 230

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 230

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2014

In this short clip below, Nanea emphasizes this important point – if you create a product customers love, it will ultimately be a good business decision as well. There is a tangible understand that comes from engineers talking with real customers that simply can’t be gleaned from intuition or staring at computer screens.

Technical Review 315

Technical Review Leadership Engineer RSS 315

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/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 Customer Development describes. and “What did customers think of your prototype?”

Silicon Valley 208

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 208

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

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Sean Murphy on the first dozen enterprise customers - Gabriel Weinberg , September 8, 2010 I recently did a Traction Book interview with Sean Murphy who runs a boutique cutomer development firm in Silicon Valley. We discussed (for ~1hr) how to approach getting the first set of enterprise customers. Want to start up in France?

Technology 191

Technology Product San Francisco CTO Hire 191

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

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 15, 2014

Not only can I not share the company’s strategy, I can’t share our thought processes, our rationale, how we think about the market, how we’ve analyzed it, about customers, about metrics, about competitors, about the future. Keep that RSS reader enabled. All that said, I do have more to share. Just not every week.

CTO Hire 266

CTO Hire RSS Cofounder Algorithm 266

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 4, 2017

If you’re building an app for the use of customers you’re already serving, this sort of research can be easy. Just for a start, you can use customer surveys to zero in on the sort of hardware (smartphones or tablets) and operating systems (Android or iOS) that are more common among your target audience.

Developer 174

Developer Software Review RSS Software Developers 174

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Oh, and since it was not code compatible with anything, we were going to have to port all the key scientific applications our customers needed (as soon as we figured out who they were.) Personal supercomputer s meant yet again learning something completely new; new computer architectures, new applications and customers, new markets.

North Carolina 133

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 133

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. By 1961 its customers now included our intelligence agencies. The “customers’” contracts funded the company. If you’re an entrepreneur, ESL is the most important company you’ve never heard of. There were no venture investors.

Silicon Valley 201

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 201

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

asymmetry, real-time, curated RSS / link-sharing]. If you were a newly minted, venture-backed consumer Internet company you had to have a deal with AOL to reach your customers. We know that Twitter is leading to customer service opportunities for businesses but the opposite is also true. cheap accessible digital hardware].

Social Network 318

Social Network Networking Internet Technical Review 318

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. After more customer interviews, we have shifted our market type hypothesis to- entering an existant market. Families gather from across the country to spend time with each other and feast on a traditional turkey dinner.

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley Turkey United States RSS 156

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

While we sometimes cut the price of graphics boards, it was only because we offered our customers no compelling reasons to buy one that was priced equivalently to the market share leaders. Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? And we lost money when we did so.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 161

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “ Start-up Lessons. &# If you want to subscribe to my RSS feed please click here or to get my blog by email click here. Get customer input. People design their products in a box assuming that they’ll show customers later and get feedback. This is another big mistake.

Founder Vesting 365

Founder Vesting Intellectual Property Stock Options IP 365

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

RSS was something that had appeared.” “….I We have a theme we call Protocol, which are technology protocols and markets built around technology protocols like SMTP for email and RSS. In 2004 / 2005 I was starting to get intrigued with user-generated content. So we have five themes – Digital Life and Distribution are the other two.”.

Technical Review 288

Technical Review Venture Capital Silicon Valley Software Review 288

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 22, 2013

Place customer testimonials wisely. Using customer testimonials has long been an effective persuasion method that businesses have employed. Many websites put a lot of thought into creatively building customer testimonials right into their webpages. Placing your social and RSS numbers in prominent places.

Social Network 167

Social Network Web Development RSS Web 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 133

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Intellectual Property At the next class I said, “You all ought to get out and start talking to customers on day one, and get early feedback on your idea. Don’t share the details of your manufacturing process with customers until you’ve locked up your intellectual property.” Just get out of the building.” Oops,” I said, “you’re right.

Vertical 159

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 159

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

In 21 st century terminology we’d say that Terman built the Radio Research lab into a customer-centric organization doing agile development. Yet decades later the military lacked the agility to write a spec in two years, let alone get 10′s of thousands of new systems deployed on aircraft as Terman had done. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 210

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story. That is until I saw that in startup after startup customers come from places you don’t plan on. Your board nods sagely at your target customer list.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 146

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

In the real world, most business plans don’t survive the first few months of customer contact. And even if they did – customers don’t ask to see your business plan. Preparing for a year is not the best way to spend time, rather getting customers is the better way to an Investor’s heart.

Business Plan 160

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 160

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

asymmetry, real-time, curated RSS / link-sharing]. Brands didn’t advertise their web pages they advertised “AOL Keywords.&# If you were a newly minted, venture-backed consumer Internet company you had to have a deal with AOL to reach your customers. emerge and are there any lessons to be gained about the future?

Social Network 297

Social Network Networking Internet EC2 297

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

After a year and a half of running training and teaching the new Z-8000 and its peripheral chips, I began to figure out that one of the jobs of marketing was to translate what engineering built into a description that our salesmen could use to talk to potential customers. I also knew our customers.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. Great article youre now in my rss feeds :) October 2, 2008 4:37 AM kamilski81 said.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

To a Hammer Everything Looks Like a Nail In hindsight my failure was that I executed to my strength – telling a compelling story – without actually listening to customer feedback. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to listen to customers. I had outsourced customer feedback and ignored the input.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 10, 2010

He thinks about how he can offer solutions, not create more problems like RSS readers did. Remember the joke on Office Space where you can’t have the engineers talking to the customers? That the one guy’s job was just to interpret what the customers wanted for the engineers. That’s not entirely far off.

Cofounder 127

Cofounder CTO Hire Design Founder 127

Occam's Razor

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

You should have a well defined strategy to create videos and how-to content (constantly updated with solutions to new pain points of customers). Not to mention how helpful they are to current or prospective customers!! For example, people who subscribe to your blog's RSS feed. Your employees should tell their stories.

Analytics 156

Analytics Marketing Social Media Technical Review 156

Duct Tape Marketing

JUNE 16, 2011

SIMPLE, EFFECTIVE AND AFFORDABLE SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING Home About Consulting Products Programs Workshops Blog Resources Contact Subscribe by RSS Subscribe to Duct Tape Marketing by Email Small Business Week 2011 Our winners! Now that’s a happy customer! 3) Peer to peer events I’ve seen this tactic produce stunning results.

Customer 78

Customer Video Social Media Software Review 78