Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Jeff Katzenberg has a great track record – head of the studio at Paramount, chairman of Disney Studios, co-founder of DreamWorks and now chairman of NewTV. They needed to be sure that what they were building was what customers wanted and needed. It has to find product-market fit before running out of cash. The result?

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Those rates gave us a map that told us a lot about our customers; insights that proved stable even when the company grew orders of magnitude bigger. Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing. BillSeitz - yes, but that was already true back in 2004.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

So the natural comparison, we thought, would be to other 3D avatar based products, like The Sims and World of Warcraft. But the early customers all compared it to MySpace. This was 2004, and we had never even heard of MySpace, let alone had any understanding of social networking. 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

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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

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