Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2016

We just finished our Lean LaunchPad class at UC Berkeley’s engineering school where many of the teams embedded machine learning technology into their products. Most often the first acquisitions in a hype cycle are for the “shiny objects” – the technology, the team and the tools. How can you not hit out of the park on day one?

Artificial Inteligence 318

Artificial Inteligence Lean Exit Strategy Startup 318

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

Over the last three years our Lean LaunchPad / NSF Innovation Corps classes have been teaching hundreds of entrepreneurial teams a year how to build their startups by getting out of the building and testing their hypotheses behind their business model. The next customer segment we tried was startup founders. Here’s how that happened.

Lean 315

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Once upon a time every great organization was a scrappy startup willing to take risks – new ideas, new methods, new customers, targets, and mission. HR processes, legal processes, financial processes, acquisition and contracting processes, security processes, product development and management processes, and types of organizational forms etc.

Government 315

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 315

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 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

As our Lean LaunchPad for Life Sciences class winds down, a good number of the 26 teams are trying to figure out whether they should go forward to turn their class project into a business. I pointed out that the “data” you gather in 10 weeks (talking to 100+ customers, partners, payers, etc.,) My customers were 14-year old boys.

Cofounder 325

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 325

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

To steal customers away from competitors without throwing endless amounts of money at major advertising platforms, work smarter, not harder. Detail the customer demographics that purchase certain products or services. LinkedIn’s social media customer story video uses social proof to sell its Sales Navigator feature: Image source.

Advertising 131

Advertising Cost Customer PR 131

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

The first hint lies in its name; this is a product development model, not a marketing model, not a sales hiring model, not a customer acquisition model, not even a financing model (and we’ll also find that in most cases it’s even a poor model to use to develop a product.) Where Are the Customers? Product Development Diagram 1.

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

A marketing growth strategy goes deeper into customer relationships to uncover opportunities that engage, activate, and retain. This philosophy comes from The Lean Startup methodology , which relies on testing hypotheses to better understand your customers’ pain points and goals. Your customers want different things.

Marketing 115

Marketing Framework Metrics Channel 115

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the Customer Development model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers?

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

We tend to associate the government with words like bureaucracy rather than lean innovation. Department of Defense by adopting Lean Methodology inside their agency. The NGA has adopted Lean Innovation methods to make this happen. Their goal is to integrate these techniques into their own Lean innovation processes.

Lean 177

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 177

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

We tend to associate the government with words like bureaucracy rather than lean innovation. Department of Defense by adopting Lean Methodology inside their agency. The NGA has adopted Lean Innovation methods to make this happen. Their goal is to integrate these techniques into their own Lean innovation processes.

Lean 177

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 177

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

I am always surprised when critics complain that the Lean Startup’s Build, Measure, Learn approach is nothing more than “throwing incomplete products out of the building to see if they work.”. It’s time to update Build, Measure, Learn to what we now know is the best way to build Lean startups. Here’s how. 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 265

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 265

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2016

We just finished our Lean LaunchPad class at UC Berkeley’s engineering school where many of the teams embedded machine learning technology into their products. Most often the first acquisitions in a hype cycle are for the “shiny objects” – the technology, the team and the tools. How can you not hit out of the park on day one?

Artificial Inteligence 120

Artificial Inteligence Lean Exit Strategy Startup 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2013

It’s been fun watching a 20th Century entrepreneur learn new tricks as he builds his next startup, FindTheBest using Lean Methodology. Lean Start-up Connection: Business Model Canvas. We assumed our customers would be any smart Internet users looking to make a decision—granted, an extremely broad customer segment.

Lean 293

Lean Agile Customer Development SEO 293

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

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. The class has talked to ~2,200 customers to date.

Customer 323

Customer Churn Rate Customer Development Lean 323

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

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 29, 2017

This 4-part story, however, explores the Austin ecosystem based on the 4Cs framework —  culture , capital , customers, and competencies. Should Early Stage Startups Move to Austin because of Customers? Early adopters, especially those who are willing to pay for novel services, are the lifeblood of lean startups.

Early Stage 54

Early Stage Austin Silicon Valley San Antonio 54

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 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2019

He’ll be speaking at this year’s Lean Startup Conference , and also has a new book (for which I very happily wrote a short foreword) coming out next month: Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It. Morgan credit card business to acquire tons of Square customers at a very low cost.

Lean 108

Lean Venture Capital Conversion IPO 108

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 24, 2017

One characteristic remains: the products subscription businesses can provide, ranging from magazine subscriptions to literally anything, can appear on a customer’s doorstep every day, week, month or year. Through customer acquisition, you’ll work to grow the revenue and then, use that revenue to cover operational costs.

Churn Rate 134

Churn Rate eCommerce Business Model Bootstrapping 134

View from Seed

MARCH 19, 2015

He’s dubbed the approach “ pretotyping ,” and it shares many of the same principles as both its similar-sounding (if later-stage) cousin, prototyping, as well as the more well-known lean startup movement. NVV: Lots of entrepreneurs reading this will think about the lean startup movement when they hear about pretotyping.

Product 120

Product Technical Review Marketing Lean 120

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

and the subsequent acquisition sprees of companies like Google, Yahoo!, The last couple of years has also seen the huge initial success of Ycombinator, the Lean Startup and many other product driven approaches to going to market. I care about the thought that you’ve given to the customer problem. portfolios.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

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. Module 1, The Lean Method. Module 1, The Lean Method.

Intellectual Property 328

Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development Acquisition 328

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

“The idea is that when you work backwards and start with the press release, it’s easier to put yourself in the customer’s shoes.”. Internal press releases are centered around the customer problem, how current solutions (internal or external) fail, and how the new product will blow away existing solutions. Image source ).

Product 110

Product Campaign Acquisition Social Media 110

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 21, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. The Lean Startup Conference was founded four years ago to bring together real entrepreneurs who have applied Lean Startup techniques and have useful advice to share with each other. These show success at your core business. Retention (do they return?),

Lean 167

Lean Louisville Startup Metrics 167

ReadWriteStart

MAY 30, 2022

You’re lean, agile, and responsive to external changes, ready to test a new idea or head in a new direction. Imagine squandering a million dollars to rush a product or service to the market only to realize your customers don’t want it. Plan for investment early as you would plan for acquisition.

Bootstrapping 147

Bootstrapping Startup Equity Silicon Valley 147

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 3, 2010

As I’ve written in the past, I encourage companies I’m an investor in to continually explore small acquisitions when entrepreneurs have created something that is on their roadmap. AgileZen was one such company and the acquisition has been a successful one for everyone. Why did you start AgileZen ?

Founder 122

Founder Acquisition Software Developers Software Development 122

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 21, 2013

Lean Analytics is the latest addition to the Lean Series. Let’s say you lose 3% of your customers every month. When you only have a hundred customers, losing three of them is not that terrible. Imagine that you have become really big, and now have a million customers. to 3% a month.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

Up and Running

JUNE 25, 2020

And while generating new business and growing your customer base is necessary to succeed, it doesn’t happen overnight. Know your customers. Knowing who your customers are and what they need is vital. But now you have an active customer base that you need to engage with and in the process improve your business.

Small Business 180

Small Business Hosting Social Media Community 180

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

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

Done right, ASO can reduce user acquisition costs, increase app downloads, and improve your app’s value. Building a sustainable customer experience that goes beyond conversion rates is key. Now, customers expect to be able to make transfers between accounts, pay other people, and alert their banks to fraud.

Metadata 121

Metadata Technical Review Retention Metrics 121

Mucker Lab

MAY 28, 2020

These lost startups land higher valuations, have larger teams, outsource more product development and spend more money on customer acquisition than their peers. Sometimes founders misapply lean startup methodology. You can’t force customers to want solutions to problems they don’t have, but you can fix a flawed execution.

Startup 78

Startup Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Review 78

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 14, 2015

A faltering PC business complicates Lenovo’s strategy to lean on this segment – and the operating profit it generates – to fuel growth in its mobile and enterprise segments that drives overall revenue and profit gains. year-to-year to $7.3 and Europe. year-to-year revenue growth in calendar 3Q15 to $10.9 billion.

Revenue 100

Revenue Technical Review Lean Mobile 100

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 29, 2017

This actually aligns closely with the Lean Planning approach, which allows your business to be more agile and make adjustments as you test your idea in the market. Customers simply wanted a working product that solved their problem. Potential customers want value , and they will go any length to get it. How did I build mine?

Acquisition 93

Acquisition Startup Engineer Metrics 93

ConversionXL

MARCH 19, 2020

Greater discipline during boom times offered more flexibility during lean years. And getting it right during the lean years, Bain reports , has a massive impact on companies’ growth rate after things improve: ( Image source ). They do more of the same with less, often lowering quality and customer satisfaction. Promotion.

Marketing 121

Marketing Campaign Non-Compete Lean 121