Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Posted on September 14, 2009 by steveblank Over the last 30 years Wall Street’s appetite for technology stocks have changed radically – swinging between unbridled enthusiasm to believing they’re all toxic. While there was an occasional bad apple, the public markets rewarded companies with revenue growth and sustainable profits.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Freemium models have their own scorekeeping.)

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

When a startup finds a repeatable sales process and steadily increasing revenue, its investors wants to harvest the rewards and build a culture of “execution.” While this sounds inexplicable to an outside observer, sometimes it makes sense.

Customer 201

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 201

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And it was going to mention the two words that SuperMac marketing needed to live and breathe: revenue and profit. If marketing can’t deliver the 40,000 leads what else can we do for sales to still achieve our revenue and profitability?”) T he mission was our goal , but based on circumstances it may change, but the Intent was immovable.

Silicon Valley 263

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. After twelve months Handspring’s revenue was $170 million. They never understood Market Type. End result?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 203

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2010

The company loses customers, then revenues and profits decline and it eventually gets acquired or goes out of business. If you’ve been reading my book on Customer Development and follow my work on Market Type , this type of innovation is best for adding new products to existing markets. Creative Destruction.

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Search Agile Customer Development Technical Review 245

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I have been working on getting a startup to revenue for a while, and while this is my 4th iteration and I have not yet succeeded, I’ve been learning new things every time. 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.

Silicon Valley 126

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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? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Reply Wyatt ODay , on July 2, 2009 at 8:18 am Said: Great post, Steve. Reply Mark Essel , on July 2, 2009 at 9:14 am Said: Reality distortion field isn’t the basic technique covered in startups 101? You mention above being on both sides of a reality distortion field. I love all these war stories.

Silicon Valley 120

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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. What is your perspective on ‘sustainable technical differentiation’ for customer/market risk companies? For example, complex new semiconductor architectures, (i.e.

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 147

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

Reply Michael Alan Miller » Crash , on August 24, 2009 at 8:47 am Said: [.] | Posted by Chill on 24 Aug 2009 at 11:47 am | Shattered. [.] If you’re a startup raising money or just want to see your name online, there’s not a better blog on the web. I’m not buying it… literally. Reply Michael F.

Silicon Valley 191

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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.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

on May 26, 2009 at 6:18 am Said: [.] Reply Dmitriy , on May 26, 2009 at 6:54 pm Said: I would like to humbly suggest banning the term “vertical&# altogether. Reply steveblank11 , on May 26, 2009 at 7:57 pm Said: Dmitry, I think your comment makes my point. What is it that’s unique about the market I’m in?

Vertical 151

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Reply Bill Allred , on May 1, 2009 at 10:46 am Said: This is a really common pitfall. If you look at the top 3 online retailers by conversion rate, none of these are award-winning designs : [link] [link] [link] However, they convert ~25% of visitors to customers.

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Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Unfortunately most startups learn this by going through the “Fire the first Sales VP&# drill: You start your company with a list of potential customers reading like a “who’s who&# of whatever vertical market you’re in (or the Fortune 1000 list.) Your board nods sagely at your target customer list.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 1, 2009 The Steve Jobs method Image via CrunchBase Its been a long time since I did a post that was primarily a link to another blog with commentary, but I came across something today that I really want to share. Not even if its generating revenue. August 1, 2009 7:39 AM Ravi Mohan said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?)

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, February 20, 2009 Work in small batches Software should be designed, written, and deployed in small batches. February 21, 2009 12:10 AM Harold Fowler said. February 21, 2009 7:39 AM Rocky1138 said. February 21, 2009 12:26 PM Anonymoussaid. February 21, 2009 3:08 PM SCC said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 15, 2009 Why Continuous Deployment? June 15, 2009 7:41 AM William Pietri said. June 15, 2009 8:24 AM Stevesaid. One thing you seem to be treating lightly is how to use continuous development in business systems. Corporate customers seem to prefer regular but distinct releases.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Slowly, over time, we optimized (or eliminated) each step in the process of becoming a customer by giving us money. And one day a remarkable thing happened: we started making more than five dollars a day in revenue. Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, July 2, 2009 How to conduct a Five Whys root cause analysis In the lean startup workshops , we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the technique of Five Whys. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 15comments: Anonymoussaid. July 3, 2009 3:11 AM Eric Williamson said.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 27, 2009 Cash is not king Cash on hand is just one important variable in a startup’s life, but it’s not necessarily the most important. Customer Development : a disciplined approach to finding out if there is a market for your product before its too late.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Continuous deployment and continuous learning At long last, some of the actual implementers of the advanced systems we built at IMVU for rapid deployment and rapid response are starting to write about it. In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, January 2, 2009 Lessons Learned on Mashable today I had the good fortune to be asked to write a guest post over at Mashable , which is running today, called HOW TO: Raise Money in a Down Economy. January 2, 2009 11:54 AM Daniel Davie said. January 2, 2009 4:48 PM Chris Desouza said.

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San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2013

By 2009, I was fed up. Regarding revenue, we made a big bet on “purchase intent.” We looked at social sites—like Facebook and Twitter—with huge user bases, but comparably small revenue. Lean Start-up Connection: Customer Development. Once we built out a sales team, revenue also started to grow nicely.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, June 5, 2009 It’s a startup, not a spreadsheet Some people, when they start to realize the power of using data to inform their decisions, become obsessed with optimization. And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, September 11, 2009 The cardinal sin of community management Once you have a product launched, you will the face the joys – and the despair – of a community that grows up around it. There are many articles by many experts ( myself included ) extolling the virtues of listening to customers.

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Community Management Lean Software Review 158

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

The watershed moment was in 2009 when the co-founder of Netscape, Marc Andreessen, formed a venture firm and started to invest in founders with the goal to teach them how to be CEOs for the long term. This would continue for months, as customers weren’t behaving as per the business plan. Andreessen realized that the game had changed.

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Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 227

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Why vanity metrics are dangerous In a previous post, I defined two kinds of metrics: vanity metrics and actionable metrics. They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, August 24, 2009 Marching through quicksand I have been spending a lot of time lately talking to people in various media companies: editors and agents, executives, journalists, producers and directors. What is the right revenue model? Doug August 24, 2009 8:21 AM Hugh said. Very smart stuff.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Lets return to our team thats failing to hit their targets.

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Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, January 28, 2009 Refactoring yourself out of business Let me start out by saying I am a big fan of refactoring , the ongoing process of changing code so that it performs the same behaviors but has more elegant structure. Its an essential discipline of good software development, especially in startups.

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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.&# And this is true outside of games. And this is true outside of games.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on. What is customer development?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 263

Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

Achieving consensus about every corner case from each stakeholder in the room is something large companies with large revenues, shareholders and employees need to do. Customer Development.) Unlike large corporations, startup meetings are not about achieving consensus for every objection raised.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

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