Steve Blank

DECEMBER 2, 2013

We talk a lot about Customer Development, but there’s nothing like seeing it in action to understand its power. But the big payoff came when their discussions with medical device customers revealed an entirely new way to think about pricing —potentially tripling their revenue. A Five-sided Market. It’s Much Simpler.

Customer 324

Customer Churn Rate Customer Development Lean 324

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. Our firm has a portfolio of companies across a broad range of markets and the way we look at it is pretty simple – the deals fall into two types: those with customer/market risk and those with invention risk.”

Vertical 147

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 147

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

This class is built on conducting in-person of interviews with customers/ beneficiaries and stakeholders, but due to the pandemic, teams now had to do all their customer discovery via a computer screen. How would customer interviews work via video? See here for an extended discussion of remote customer discovery.).

Lean 394

Lean Security Asia SBIR 394

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

I pointed out that the “data” you gather in 10 weeks (talking to 100+ customers, partners, payers, etc.,) Now that you’ve gotten to know your potential channel and customers, regardless of how much money you’re going to make, will you enjoy working with these customers for the next 3 or 4 years? see 0:30 in the video below).

Cofounder 326

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 326

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Build a product, get it into the real world, measure customers’ reactions and behaviors, learn from this, and use what you’ve learned to build something better. Repeat, learning whether to iterate, pivot or restart until you have something that customers love. Waterfall Development.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

With hindsight we should have had “proof of concepts” tested in a corporate center (think ‘pop-up incubator’) where they would do extensive Customer Discovery. Doing so meant they would have to take risks for IP acquisition and customer/market risks outside their experience or comfort zone.

Programming 267

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 267

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

In 2010 it got worse with an Act in parliament about the Monitoring of Foreigners’ Corporate Acquisitions. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. Instead the business press dumped on the founders for “selling out.”

Finland 327

Finland Naming Russia Government 327

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Cory Nelson will talk with Eric about how GE has applied the MVP method to its development of very large diesel engines. Max Ventilla took Aardvark from startup to Google acquisition, a case study Eric described in The Lean Startup. Now Max is reinventing education through AltSchool , which creates local microschools.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

SVPG

AUGUST 30, 2013

This is not a new technique, but you may recognize it as the foundation of Customer Discovery and Customer Development. I''m talking about the power of a happy, reference customer. First, let''s be clear what it means to be a reference customer. Smart prospective customers worry about this as well.

Customer 65

Customer API Brazil Germany 65

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2014

Now you can watch Part 2 “ The Lean Approach “ This group of six videos provides an overview of how to successfully do Customer Discovery. You’ll learn how to: get to know your customers. get, keep and grow customers. 1:49: Use Customer Development to Test Your Hypotheses. 2:44: What is a Pivot?

Intellectual Property 329

Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development Acquisition 329

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. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

Lean 250

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

and the subsequent acquisition sprees of companies like Google, Yahoo!, It should talk about how many customers you think you will acquire and how much you’ll charge for your product. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small?

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

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.&# Let’s begin with the four customer currencies. And this is true outside of games.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

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? This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. They are gaining valuable customer data.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

In this time, building a successful business meant building a company that had paying customers quarter after quarter. It did not mean building a startup into a company to flip or hype on the market with no earnings or revenue, but building a company that had paying customers. They taught you about customers, markets and profits.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

You must also understand the value the product provides customers (along with the rest of your business model.). And going for crowdfunding before you do customer discovery with customers can lock you into the wrong idea too early. Yore launching to the customers you’ve already discovered and validated your ideas. . …

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

Second, this class – which is built on the idea of interviewing customers/beneficiaries and stakeholders in person – now had to do all their customer discovery via a computer screen. How on earth would customer interviews work via video? At first this seemed to be a fatal stake through the heart of the class.

Oakland 306

Oakland Asia Lean Video 306

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 28, 2011

By Peter Fader, author of “ Wharton Executive Education Customer Centricity Essentials: What It Is, What It Isn’t, and Why It Matters “ I often use the metaphor of fishing as a way to explain new customer acquisition. Up-selling: moving customers up to higher level products/services.

Customer 162

Customer Customer Development Acquisition Pennsylvania 162

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

We found 4 different major groups of startups that all have very different behavior regarding customer acquisition, time, product, market and team. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. And they’re just getting started. Congratulations. Download the full Startup Genome report here.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

> Uber's " Reality Therapy 4 Startups": What U Need 2 Know NOW > Steve Blank on why NOT to be an Entrepreneur > Airbnb's Globetrotting Lessons: Building 4 a Global Market > Vinod Khosla - The VC Legend: Interview w/ Dave McClure > Eric Ries on Entrepreneurship: What He's Learned Along the Way > GitHub's Secret 2 Success: Rethinking (..)

Lean 165

Lean Cofounder Startup Software Engineering 165

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. It bears repeating: an early-stage startup must focus on making one customer group excited by a mission-aligned product.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

To promote innovation inside the NGA, they’ve staffed an Enterprise Innovation Office (EIO) to coach, educate and advise the entire agency, from core leadership to the operational edges, with methods and concepts of validated learning through rapid experimentation and customer development.

Lean 178

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 178

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

To promote innovation inside the NGA, they’ve staffed an Enterprise Innovation Office (EIO) to coach, educate and advise the entire agency, from core leadership to the operational edges, with methods and concepts of validated learning through rapid experimentation and customer development.

Lean 178

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 178

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. channel partners and Chinese manufacturers and customer acquisition and activation programs outside their home country. Trip 2 to the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2016

It struck me as I watched the teams try to find how their technology would solve real customer problems, is that machine learning is following a similar pattern of previous technical infrastructure innovations. Most often the first acquisitions in a hype cycle are for the “shiny objects” – the technology, the team and the tools.

Artificial Inteligence 320

Artificial Inteligence Lean Exit Strategy Startup 320

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

While we sometimes cut the price of graphics boards, it was only because we offered our customers no compelling reasons to buy one that was priced equivalently to the market share leaders. Was SuperMac attempting to introduce radically new products and create a new market ? And we lost money when we did so.

Silicon Valley 144

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 144

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2014

A pivot may mean you changed your customer segment, your channel, revenue model/pricing, resources, activities, costs, partners, customer acquisition – lots of other things than just the product. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development. A Pivot is not just changing the product.

Business Model 331

Business Model Lean Customer Development Channel 331

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

But underlying the company’s existence was a fundamental hypothesis we refused to see or test - customers would care if we did. Our potential customers didn’t seem to be calling for Hollywood stories, characters and narrative. Our customers wanted to kill, shoot or hunt for something. That’s OK, because we knew better.

Silicon Valley 212

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 212

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. These three tools allow startups to focus on the parts of an early stage venture that matter the most: the product, product/market fit, customer acquisition, revenue and cost model, channels and partners.

Oakland 327

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 327

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 25, 2014

The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions – crowdspring.co/1nHT6tS. The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions – crowdspring.co/1nHT6tS. Corporate Acquisitions Of Startups — Why Do They Fail? 7 Reasons You Can’t Be Friends With Your Employees – crowdspring.co/1jrrWok.

Social Media 92

Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2014

Most companies incrementally improved their products with process innovation (better materials, cheaper, product line extensions) and/or through acquisitions. Skunk works differed from advanced research groups in that they were more than just product development groups. Lessons Learned. Skunk works looked much like a startup.

Channel 288

Channel Customer Development Distribution Restful 288

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

You’re obviously not showing charts of user growth, number of customers, or revenue. Pre-launch customer development data is another way, sometimes in the form of user surveys for consumer companies or interviews with potential beta customers for B2B businesses. B) Post-Product Companies.

Seed Stage 149

Seed Stage B2B Seed Capital Revenue 149

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?)

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

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. Stitcher - San Francisco-based service that lets users customize talk radio programming on their mobile devices. M&A Discussion.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

For example, recruiting writ large is useful at all stages of development. Similarly, customer introductions are invaluable in the early days, but become less valuable once a company has a fully-formed go to market function.”. Customer Development. A well-developed model is Andreessen Horowitz’s Executive Briefing Center.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 6, 2020

Two Acquisition Paradigm Shifts Raj Shah, former head of the Defense Innovation Unit, pointed out that men and women in uniform have signed up to support national security with the equipment that they are given and must make do with what you give them. How we prepare for and fight future wars must reflect these new realities of modern war.

Technology 405

Technology Afghanistan Iraq Vietnam 405

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

As a founder you are testing a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? 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. Who are our partners?

Balance Sheet 300

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 300