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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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

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

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 19, 2017

Retaining a customer involves keeping them engaged, anticipating their needs, and making sure your brand stays at the top of their mind whenever they are thinking about purchasing again. Among many other strategies employed by e-retailers, improving the customer experience seems to carry a significant weight in increasing revenues.

Software Review 133

Software Review Technical Review Retention Channel 133

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. The first class was an introduction to the concepts of business model design and customer development. The Adventure Begins.

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Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 300

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 9, 2013

Unless you’re running your business from underneath a rock, you know that losing a customer is a big deal because it has a significant impact on your organizational health. Besides the loss of potential future revenue, any sunk costs (costs you initially incur to gain the customer) are unrecoverable.

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Customer Technical Review Florida Cofounder 170

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. To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

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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San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

The art of entrepreneurship and the science of Customer Development is not just getting out of the building and listening to prospective customers. He got my attention when he said, “following your customer development stuff is making my company fail.” “Business model? It’s understanding who to listen to and why.

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Customer Business Model Customer Development Startup 326

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.

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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

Traffic.com sold 10-second in-content advertising spots to local TV broadcasters. So when it came time to start their next company the starting questions was, “OK, what big problem could we solve for local TV broadcasters?&# They’re taking on the declining revenue streams of local TV and creating new, measurable ad activities.

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San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

I thing I’ve learned over the years is that technology purists hate advertising even when it is that revenue stream that truthfully drives much of our industry. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards.

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Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

. - Customer content and engagement built rapid growth in the success of Intel ’s social media and Web-based marketing efforts, increasing “customer contacts” by a factor of tenfold and overall page views by 100x. Traditional approaches to marketing and sales will only screw up customer advocacy. Wrong message, wrong audience.

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Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 4, 2010

), created the pay per click search engine and advertising system and demo’d it at the TED conference. It was not until October 2000 that Google offered its version of a pay per click advertising system -AdWords -allowing advertisers to create text ads for placement on the Google search engine. Lieberman 2007.

Silicon Valley 319

Silicon Valley Differentiation United States Customer Development 319

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

I had been confused for years why I had to update an income statement each board meeting that said zero for 18 months before we had any revenue. As a founder you are testing a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? If you are following Customer Development , the answer is easy.

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Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 300

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

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.

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 133

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 16, 2013

Freemium is not customer development Just imagine how much you’ll learn once you have 1,000 real, active users of the system: Everything from behavioral statistics (which features are actually used?) Which means it costs 20-100x as much on marketing campaigns to achieve the equivalent revenue.

Marketing 318

Marketing Viral Campaign Business Model 318

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

In today’s language of Customer Development , RIM positioned the Blackberry as a segment of an existing market – pager users who needed two-way communication. In today’s language of Customer Development , a TiVo positioned as a segment of an existing market (VCR’s) was a no brainer. New Market Revenue Curve.

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Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 272

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. You dive deep into a customer development process, working closely with a few customers who feed you requirements and are willing to trial an imperfect product that is evolving quickly.

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Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

You declare how much someone clicking an advertisement is worth to you, and then the search engine does its best to get you as many clicks as it can at that price. Slowly, over time, we optimized (or eliminated) each step in the process of becoming a customer by giving us money. SEM is a simple idea. I just came across this post.

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SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 21, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. Those tools do not integrate as seamlessly with e-mail as advertised. We would rather chase revenue. Of course you should chase revenue.

Widget 204

Widget Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 204

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

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

I’ve talked with a number of software development shops who are eager to get into the business of cofounding companies, i.e., getting product revenue and equity instead of just consulting revenue. An intrapreneur is the extreme; usually an intrapreneur’s employer owns 100% of the new business that she creates.

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Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

On Sean’s GrowthHackers.com , categories include… So, essentially everything from customer development and onboarding to persuasion and social marketing fall under the umbrella of growth hacking. Conducted Customer Development. Established a strong value proposition based on Customer Development.

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Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

The art of entrepreneurship and the science of customer development is not just getting out of the building and listening to prospective customers. He got my attention when he said, "following your customer development stuff is making my company fail." Customer Development = The Pursuit of Customer Understanding.

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Business Model Customer Development Revenue Customer 127

SVPG

MAY 17, 2012

I usually encourage this to be the sole scorecard KPI during this phase because I like the results that come from a single-minded dedication to happy, referenceable customers. The customer development program (we develop reference customers in parallel with developing the product) is designed specifically to achieve this.

Product 62

Product Germany Seattle Advertising 62

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

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. So I have a question for you, Jason.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

ConversionXL

DECEMBER 2, 2020

The stage where your customers are actively researching for more information; during this stage social proof , and testimonials play an important role. The stage in which a customer makes a purchase. The stage in which your customers develop brand loyalty. Building your custom marketing and sales funnel.

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Churn Rate Analytics Retention SQL 78

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

What is the right revenue model? Aside from the dramatically shorter development cycle that browser games enjoy, the split testing of features (which is intuitive to web application makers) is something that propelled Zynga's games and revenues to the top of the social games vertical. Eric, First of all, great post.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. Their economics blends elements of the free, advertising-supported, "eyeballs" business with more traditional e-commerce and subscription businesses. Is it that they act as free advertising for our premium product?

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Furthermore, I think most of what you are suggesting is applicable in companies/ industries that are not software development. I work in advertising and this system would work to analyze failures. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

It requires separating the product launch from the marketing launch (see Dont Launch ) as well as other staple Lean Startup tactics: minimum viable product, split-testing, customer development and the pivot. Early this year, SlideShare launched custom channels. That is customer development.

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San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Duct Tape Marketing

JUNE 27, 2017

We got to thousands of customers and millions in recurring revenue. We started seeing the writing on the wall, I’d say at least a year ago where, again, you’ve got to listen to your customers. Are you selling products, services, advertising sponsorships? Effectively you’re trying to create a person.

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Community SEO Technical Review Audience 39

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

I would focus on one product and set a goal to generate $1M in yearly revenue from it. Near shoring development with your team (ex: your team is based in Canada / India) is cool, but not outsourcing. Outsourcing is something a big company, with a known customer / problem (that has revenue & traction) does to save cost.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

It took us months to realize what we had done, and to eventually apologize and win back the trust of those customers wed alienated. The whole episode cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. In fact, it was the revenue trends that eventually alerted us to the magnitude of the problem.

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.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

They have many, many man-years of development and customer development in them. How do you split revenue? And then the final thing is just getting the revenue up. Jason: A lot of things are solved with revenue. Is there a repeatable advertising channel that’s going to get you people? Edwin: Yes.

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220