Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Jon Sebastiani , founder and CEO of KRAVE Jerky , a company that got its start in my class at Berkeley back in 2011 and was recently acquired by Hershey. Taking My Class.

Lean 120

Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

This was 2004, and we had never even heard of MySpace, let alone had any understanding of social networking. It required hearing customers say it over and over again for us to take a serious look, and eventually to realize that social networking was core to our business. Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

It was fall 2004, and the presidential election was in full swing. One day, we became convinced that a killer app for IMVU would be to sell a presidential debate bundle, where our customers could put on a Bush or Kerry avatar, and then engage in mock debates with each other. What is customer development?

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

I liked the flattering Venture Hacks commentary so much Ill just quote it: Many founders believe that early stage startups are endeavors of execution. The customer is known, the product is known, and all we have to do is act. What happened when we got early press (circa 2004) in violation of our own no-PR rule.

Lean 74

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 13, 2008 SEM on five dollars a day How do you build a new product with constant customer feedback while simultaneously staying under the radar? Trying to answer that question at IMVU led me to discover Google AdWords and the world of search engine marketing. SEM is a simple idea.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

I read a ton of existing literature and came up with a formal methodology for search I called Customer Development. That resulted in a new process for Search: Customer Development + traditional product management/Waterfall Engineering. Berkeley asked me to teach a class in Customer Development.

Lean 317

Lean Georgia Michigan Business Model 317

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

When we started IMVU in 2004, we could rely on a staggering amount of open source software that jumpstarted our initial product offering. At IMVU, when wed hire a new engineer, we could get them to ship code to production on their first day, even if they had never programmed in PHP before. Thats simply impossible on most platforms.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166