Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. Then one day it was over.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

The Startup Magazine

DECEMBER 17, 2021

Try to set reasonable expectations for your customers. Use video footage of navigating the software to precisely represent what’s on offer. Of course, if you and your developers have built something that you’re confident in, then there’s really no reason you would need to exaggerate your claims.

Software Developers 141

Software Developers Software Development Reputation Software Review 141

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.

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 220

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

These don’t require coding skills—they’re usually visual templates that are easy to use but don’t allow for great customization (that would require technical skills). Custom development. This means hiring/contracting a freelance web developer or an agency to design and develop your site from start to finish.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

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. Prodigy spent $50 million on advertising and in-store displays. Like that, but better&#.

Customer Development 203

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 203

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

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 19, 2017

For instance, a system designed for purchasing shoes online could offer the features like online advertising, online price inquiry through ordinary mobile devices, apps with fashion tips on the same item, review section after sales and reward system for customer loyalty.

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.

Lean 300

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 300

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 2, 2012

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Advertising Age - [link].

Social Media 93

Social Media Small Business Design Media 93

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. Berkeley and at Stanford.

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 185

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 25, 2014

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! A 3-Day Weekend…Every Weekend?

Social Media 92

Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. If you want to scale faster you’ll need venture funding, both because of the anemic revenue, and because otherwise you can’t afford to advertise. Again, like shared hosting companies.) This is a hard slog.

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2019

If you can’t see the video of Palmer Luckey click here. Each of the eight teams presented a 2-minute video to provide context about their problem. Followed by an 8-minute slide presentation follow their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. If you can’t see the Panacea 2-minute video click here.

Oakland 271

Oakland Lean SBIR Afghanistan 271

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 6, 2014

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Customer Development 101) – crowdspring.co/1pNIOcD.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Software Review 94

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 15, 2013

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Paid Search: Are You Wasting Your Money?

Social Media 105

Social Media Small Business Design Media 105

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 12, 2012

This points to a fundamental disconnect between established companies and the customers they’re trying to reach. Executives from powerhouse advertisers like Walmart, Unilever, Coca-Cola, and others are pushing Facebook for access to more user data. And yet the firm is having substantial problems monetizing its business.

Social Media 164

Social Media Media Marketing Software Review 164

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Everyone Else is an Idiot The theme of our press blitz was all about how we were going to show the old tired game companies the right way to make video games. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

The video is only 16 minutes long and it is well worth the time. Facebook is about to try to dominate display ads the way Google dominates text ads - Chris Dixon , May 15, 2010 It is customary to divide online advertising into two categories: direct response and brand advertising. It's a great talk. It's a great talk.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Traditional approaches to marketing and sales will only screw up customer advocacy. It’s painful to watch web-based media initiatives use traditional marketing techniques such as interruption advertisements or ‘all about us’ marketing communications. Community marketing is the best way to leverage Rock Star customers.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Finally the day came, we unleashed the landing page, emailed our existing customers, and started advertising online. If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Expo SF (May.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Since this was the marketing department, I was going to be planning to spend some advertising and public relations dollars. Now I had happy and surprised customers walking around with paid advertising for my company. Who did they think were the leaders in the color graphics board and monitor market? What reviews did they trust?

Silicon Valley 192

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 192

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

I think the best solution for the social networking era is “in-stream&# advertising. It kicked Google Video’s ass. It offers Internet radio targeted advertising and is growing really well. My take was that this follows three trends: a) customer involvement in product design, b) mass customization [e.g.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

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. We will accomplish this through demand-creation activities (advertising, PR, tradeshows, seminars, web sites, etc.),

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

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. Even when moving to video, consumers had the choice between a stand-alone box or a smaller plug-in stick. Sales channels.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Either way, you can use any marketing channel thats available to bring in new customers, including word of traditional advertising, SEO, SEM - wherever you can find prospects who are going to find your product addicting. Thats why eBay advertises on search engines, and Facebook doesnt. Expo SF (May. Want to learn more about me?

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

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. Video Recording. Recording video on magnetic tape was developed in the mid 1950’s by Ampex, and had evolved into a consumer-friendly cassette by the late 1960’s.

Hockey Stick 272

Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 272

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

All the marketing materials, data sheets, advertising, press releases, trade shows, etc. Technically our positioning was correct, and with an infinite marketing budget (my back of the envelope calculations said $60M) and time, we might have made this technical fact ( QuickDraw acceleration) something a customer understood and cared about.

Silicon Valley 144

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 144

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. For customer development, start with Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany or take a look at his recent Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lecture. Expo SF (May.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in Customer Development. As another example, I could see which magazines are on people desks, and that tells me where to advertise.

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 133

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. In a customer problem pivot, we try to solve a different problem for the same customer segment. When doing intense customer development, the problem team can attain a high level of empathy with potential customers.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

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

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

Topics have included “Leveraging Pinterest”, “Mobile Commerce”, and “Facebook Advertising”. Lean Startup Circle Boston – Meetup dedicated to the lean startup and customer development methodology. Clypd – Video Advertising (backed by Atlas, DataPoint, Boston Seed). Great for recent grads or career switchers.

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

This video should be the gold standard in explaining contract terms. Reply steveblank , on September 16, 2009 at 7:00 pm said: Greg, The Google Group “Lean Startup Circle&# at [link] is a wonderful repository of Customer Development/Lean Startup success and failure. It’s more reference material. Thus, these pages.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Check your assumptions, what went wrong?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

While one could argue that a trade show is just another demand creation activity akin to advertising or PR, trade shows are the closest eyeball-to-eyeball contact you’re company is going to have with customers, competitors and partners. What didn’t? Go to trade shows like it matters. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 129

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 129

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. Those rates gave us a map that told us a lot about our customers; insights that proved stable even when the company grew orders of magnitude bigger. SEM is a simple idea.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? ► April (11) Video update on the Startup Visa Act Lean Enterprise Institute webinar, April 28 Four myths about the Lean Startup Sneak preview, KISSmetrics (and more) Sneak preview, Grockit The Lean Startup Intensive at Web 2.0

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76