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. I was an idiot.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 3, 2009 Lean Startup fbFund wrap-up Last week I had a real blast meeting with the companies at the fbFund incubator at Palo Alto. The Lean Startup fbFund Edition View more documents from Eric Ries. See Validated learning about customers for more info. Without further ado.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, March 25, 2010 Speed up or slow down? for Harvard Business Review) Over at Harvard Business Review, Ive been building up a series designed to introduce the Lean Startup methodology to a business-focused audience. Will the addition of process kill our innovative culture?

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, May 14, 2009 The Lean Startup Workshop - now an OReilly Master Class My rate of posting has been much lower lately, and this is mostly due to preparations for the upcoming Lean Startup Workshop on May 29. I have a lot of good news to report on this front. You can click here to learn more.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, June 2, 2010 The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business Review) I continue my series for Harvard Business Review with the Lean Startup technique called Five Whys. Techniques from lean manufacturing can be part of a startups innovation culture. Speed up or slow down?

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

As the conversation began to get down to how much stock and salary we could offer van Dam, we left the barber to finish his work and went to a payphone to call our CEO to confirm the deal. Reply Karma in the Lean Startup Era , on January 28, 2010 at 5:26 pm Said: [.] The response from across the country?

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The Customer is a Genius Then instead of talking about our products he segued the conversation into their products. And soon the conversation were about architectural tradeoffs and then how customers didn’t appreciate the elegant designs and how the world was going to hell in a handbasket because of these commodity microprocessors.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, January 7, 2010 Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Although much of it will sound familiar to readers of this blog, whats new is my first step towards the " new entrepreneurship " that is my goal for 2010. Id be honored to have you join the conversation. Without further ado.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, May 31, 2010 Thank you The past month has been an incredible roller coaster: #sllconf was a trending topic (briefly topping Justin Bieber before the wifi in the hotel gave out), the Web 2.0 When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 15, 2008 The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time Split-testing is a core lean startup discipline, and its one of those rare topics that comes up just as often in a technical context as in a business-oriented one when Im talking to startups. Check your assumptions, what went wrong?

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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. Market Type changes everything. Market Type Changes Everything Here’s the point. .

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 29, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 29, 2010 New conference website, speakers, agenda The Startup Lessons Learned Conference on April 23 is fast approaching. Traveling the past year, I have heard loud and clear that its time for the Lean Startup movement to enter its next phase. Earlybird Admission pricing ends in just two days.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

The Trojan Horse “Well…” I said hesitantly, “I’m not sure we should share this with you but we have a set of benchmarks that we use to measure performance….” Getting B-52s through the Soviet Air Defense System Startup Ethics: Albatross or Essential?

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, January 15, 2010 Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Harvard Business Review) The next part in the series I am writing for Harvard Business Review is online. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

I hope to show why lean and agile techniques actually reduce the negative impacts of technical debt and increase our ability to take advantage of its positive effects. Lean vs. debt In the world of physical goods, the leaner a supply chain is, the less debt is required to operate it. A similar relationship applies to technical debt.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

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. As a pay-per-click marketer, now I will look at retail packaging as a source of ideas on landing page design. That’s 10x what many websites convert.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

(For more on how this plays into the process of scaling up, see the Customer Creation stage of the customer development model.) But in the meantime, by iterating on their product with customers, they have a chance to get there on their own. Labels: agile , customer development 15comments: Scott Shapiro said.

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SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. When It’s Darkest Men See the Stars - Steve Blank , November 24, 2010 When It’s Darkest Men See the Stars. but: Something is Still Missing.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

Ill exclude those non- lean startups who basically exist for the purpose of raising bigger and bigger sums of money. If you find yourself getting asked non-key questions, try to use your answers to steer the conversation back to the key questions. How does a lean start-up find the all-star team worthy of pitching? Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

When it becomes possible to build products "live" with customers, the cycle time changes and design becomes a much more dynamic process. We still struggle to create Firm software that is defect-free, and it still requires customer insight (and maybe some customer development) to discover what will Delight.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

For example, say that your business model calls for a 4% conversion rate – as ours did initially at IMVU. After a few months of early beta at IMVU, we discovered that our actual conversion rate was about 0.4%. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

So I generally feel right at home in these conversations. Just like in the world of startups, we can start to use micro-scale pilot programs, executed in lean fashion, to gather real facts for making ROI decisions about new project investment. Each new campaign is a startup where Lean principals can be applied to maximum effect.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 28, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, March 28, 2010 Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Thanks to the generosity of sponsors, Im pleased to be able to announce two scholarship programs for upcoming lean startup events. Now the company is growing, profitable, and proving that lean startups can scale.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 2, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, April 2, 2010 Interviews Robert Scoble came by my office to learn about the Lean Startup and the Startup Lessons Learned Conference on April 23. By all accounts, the conversation was a success. Show, in which we discuss Lean Startups and the upcoming Lean Startup Intensive at the Web 2.0

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, October 30, 2008 John Doerrs 10 lean startup tips I just saw video of John Doerrs talk yesterday at VentureBeat’s “How to manage your start-up in the downturn&# roundtable event. Over-communicate with employees, investors, customers. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, June 23, 2009 Join the lean startup discussion at Facebook on Thursday I recently agreed to join Facebook s fbFund incubator as a mentor. Part of that includes giving a presentation for the fbFund companies on the lean startup methodology. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

We had some great conversations in the car, but one stuck in my mind. Unintended Lessons « Steve Blank steveblank.com/2009/09/28/unintended-lessons – view page – cached + Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) + Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40?

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 16, 2009 What is Lean about the Lean Startup? The first step in a lean transformation is learning to tell the difference between value-added activities and waste. I was giving my first-ever webcast on the lean startup. This value is evident in Lean Startups.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 22, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, May 22, 2009 The Lean Startup at SIPA follow-up I had wonderful time presenting at SIPA last night , and was completely exhausted by the incredible post-speech response. 2009 05 21 The Lean Startup At SIPA View more OpenOffice presentations from Eric Ries. Your support means the world to me.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 1, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, May 1, 2009 Lean Startup webcast post-game Wow, what an incredible turnout for webcast this morning, right on the heels of a phenomenal crowd at startup2startup last night. Its been a great twelve hours for the lean startup! wogsland : Still not understanding the "lean" aspect. What a thrill.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that. However, for the Web 2.0

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 11, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, March 11, 2010 For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? The Conversation - Harvard Business Review : Still, startups develop some kind of process — whether its disciplined, haphazard, bureaucratic or empowering — because building a great product depends on it.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. Do you know the archetype of their customers? Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, March 6, 2010 Startup Visa update As I write this, I am traveling at 30,000 feet on Virgin Americas excellent IAD->SFO nonstop, following an intense few days of conversations in Washington, DC about the Startup Visa. Our trip was bipartisan, bicameral, and bi-branches-of-government.

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