Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

It ultimately failed because she was focused on engineering the product, but didn’t validate the rest of her business model (product/market fit, distribution channel, customer acquisition, etc.). Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. Chase that idea, stop hiding, carve out the time you need. …

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

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 Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

channel partners and Chinese manufacturers and customer acquisition and activation programs outside their home country. to understand distribution channel landscape, potential partners and rough cost of customer acquisition. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention. The real risk in markets like Web 2.0

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

An early indication that you’ve found the right business model is when you believe the cost of getting customers will be less than the revenues the customers will generate. For web startups, this is when the cost of customer acquisition is less than the lifetime value of that customer. Customer Acquisition.

Balance Sheet 298

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 298

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

Bill Gross is the man responsible for the overwhelming amount of monetization on the web. I think everybody heard about this acquisition. On the founder’s side it’s about taking money off of the table and / or having strategic reserves for big acquisitions. High Profile Deal of the Week: 1. Overture sold for $1.6

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Their objective is to get users, orders, customers, etc. and if a web-based product, a minimum feature set,) all delivered in 10 weeks. Class 1 Jan 4 th Intro/Business Model/Customer Development.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Tech IPOs were a receding memory, and mergers and acquisitions became the only path to liquidity for startups. VC’s went back to basics, to focus on building companies while their founders worked on building customers. Startups could now get a first version of a product out to customers in weeks/months rather than months/years.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Its the same with acquisitions. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, The key to closing deals is never to stop pursuing alternatives.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

The size of the red bars (IPO’s) versus blue (mergers and acquisitions) illustrates that while venture-backed startups did get acquired, the IPO market was booming. But unlike an IPO where you sold stock to the public and got to run your company, in an acquisition your company is gone, and the odds are in a year or so you will be too.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

Duct Tape Marketing

AUGUST 29, 2014

Another useful report is Channels (Acquisition > Channels) with the “Mobile Traffic” segment applied. This functionality requires custom development to set up, which you can read more about here. Mark Hansen is the Founder and President of Megalytic , the leading tool for building web analytics marketing reports.

Analytics 65

Analytics Mobile Channel Conversion 65

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

Chinese Internet companies live in a large closed, self-contained ecosystem with 564 million web users with 420 million having mobile web access. there are almost no mergers or acquisitions in this market segment. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. billon, 260 million are 3G.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 267

Steve Blank

JANUARY 26, 2016

They are experts in leveraging Web 2.0 All while we’re still writing a Request for a Proposal from within the US Government procurement and acquisition channels. These acquisition and procurement “silos” of excellence are virtually impenetrable by new ideas and requirements. We’re Our Own Worst Enemy.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley North Korea Agile Lean 120

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.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2013

Unfortunately the class operates much like the military acquisition system: the project specification has minimal input from real world users, the product gets built with a waterfall engineering process, and there’s no input on whether the product actually meets real world needs until the product is delivered.

Silicon Valley 255

Silicon Valley Colorado Lean Connecticut 255

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

In a subscription business, maybe your attrition starts matching your acquisition, balancing like magic. In an eyeballs business, you just cant seem to acquire or activate that next step-up of customers. Or your cost of customer acquisition just magically floats up to match your customer lifetime value.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

Chinese Internet companies live in a large closed, self-contained ecosystem with 564 million web users with 420 million having mobile web access. there are almost no mergers or acquisitions in this market segment. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. billon, 260 million are 3G.

Silicon Valley 159

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 159

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

But these VC’s aren’t Lean because they fund startups with web-based distribution models. It’s because the startups are doing something very new that make them “Lean&# : These startups embrace customer and agile development that Eric Ries has been evangelizing. Lean VC’s are Different.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2013

Unfortunately the class operates much like the military acquisition system: the project specification has minimal input from real world users, the product gets built with a waterfall engineering process, and there’s no input on whether the product actually meets real world needs until the product is delivered.

Silicon Valley 151

Silicon Valley Colorado Lean Connecticut 151

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 3, 2012

Steve Huffman ( Reddit , Hipmunk ) for help with Web applications. Matt Brezina (Xobni, Sincerely ) for advice on customer development, finding product/market fit and scaling user acquisition. SOPA/PIPA). Tikhon Bernstam ( Parse , Scribd ) for insight into building out your product, team and company.

Founder 116

Founder San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup 116

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

The Four Steps to the Epiphany (highly recommended book by Steve Blank) preaches for customer development before product development, advocating a quick launch with a minimal feature set rather than a full fledged product offering. Fast doesn’t mean half-baked and cheap shouldn’t translate into lower quality.

Lean 120

Lean Customer Development Audience Viral 120

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. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

The App Store is a channel for customer acquisition. I think its helpful to think about two kinds of competition for distribution: acquisition competition and retention competition. Acqusition competition is how new apps get new customers. On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

viniciusvacanti.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

It’s actually pretty hard to find a good start-up job if you have no real engineering or user acquisition / product management skills. Big Picture Overview of All the Components of a Web Service [To Come] More to Come… Cliff Dailey This is a great post. Thanks a lot for writing. davetomback Great post.

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Ruby 43

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

To see proof of this, simply observe the results of the large majorities of corporate acquisitions of startups. To see proof of this, simply observe the results of the large majorities of corporate acquisitions of startups. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ▼ June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. Delivery platforms are the vehicles through which customers come to interact with your product.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I’d been around the web long enough to remember the dozens of companies before YouTube that tried to create crowdsourced video sites and failed. Storm Clouds - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 12, 2010 We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years. What went wrong?

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

It sounds like youre assuming that your execution will be flawless, even something to be copied by competitors, but how can you know without testing it on the customer? Ideas are worthless when theyre another spin on a web 2.0 It was yet another Web 2.0 social network/web analysis/etc. Shocking, I know.

Stealth 41

Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

To say he has had an impact on the web would be an understatement. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards. So when he saw the browser it instantly dawned on him that this would be the greatest customer development tool ever.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

andrewchenblog.com

MARCH 10, 2010

Coupled with A/B testing, customer development, and thinking through business problems in a scientific, hypothesis-driven way, you end up with a powerful cocktail of techniques to build a modern startup in the most iterative way possible. We’ll call this general category of debt Type I.

Technical Review 47

Technical Review Design Las Vegas Product 47

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

Its goal is to take the original idea and search for a repeatable and scalable business model - first by finding product/market fit, then by testing all the parts of the business model (pricing, channel, acquisition/activation, partners, costs, etc.). Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career/Culture.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

Steve Blank

JANUARY 8, 2019

To existing competitors or to existing requirements and acquisition systems they look like minimum viable products – barely finished, iterative and incremental prototypes. Successful examples, Apple and the iPhone, Amazon and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Some Horizon 3 disruptions do take long periods of development.

China 295

China Government Russia Acquisition 295

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2013

What if you could think like an expert on any topic in a matter of minutes, instead of after hours of inefficient web browsing? Lean Start-up Connection: Customer Development. Thousands, then millions of new customers were coming to the site through SEO, just like we’d guessed with our customer acquisition hypothesis.

Lean 293

Lean Agile Customer Development SEO 293

ConversionXL

JULY 3, 2014

With only 6% of senior executives believing that their companies understand their customers’ needs extremely well, it’s no wonder why customer acquisition and retention has become a substantial problem. The Case For Building Customer Personas Out Of Data-Driven Research. 3) Web & Exit Surveys.

Customer 133

Customer Analytics Conversion Lead Generation 133

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

And most web applications do their positioning right in the first few screens of the app. Why, we just unified acquisition and engagement! I do think the concept allows us to unify acquisition and engagement, and is important for that reason. helping you balance engagement vs acquisition. March 25, 2009 9:19 AM Eric said.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

They should understand the different states of the user (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue) and focus on moving users from one state to the next. In a nutshell: Acquisition - Get people to hear about your product from press, blogs and social channels. First Steps in Growth Hacking for Startups.

API 167

API Viral Startup Retention 167