Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? Search Versus Execution.

Search 322

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 322

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. Founders fit the definition of a creator: they see something no one else does.

Agile 332

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 332

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

Neither cases nor business plans replicate the actual startup experience. Cases and plans are useful for teaching managers of process, not founders. Founders of startups (and new ventures inside existing companies) are searching for product/market fit and a repeatable and scalable business model.

Lean 435

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 435

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. Technology in search of a market.

Lean 316

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 316

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

Customer Development is a technique startups use to quickly iterate and test each part of their business model. How you execute Customer Development varies, depending on your type of business. In my book, “ The Four Steps to the Epiphany ” I use enterprise software as the business model example.

Customer Development 268

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 268

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

At best I think business plan competitions are a waste of time. Business Plan Versus Business Models. Where did the idea that startups write business plans come from? A simple way to think about it is that in a startup no business plan survives first contact with customers. What did you build/do?

Business Plan 314

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 314

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

The founders were simply wrong about their assumptions about customer needs. While companies execute business models, startups search for a business model. (Or Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.).

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Posted on June 11, 2009 by steveblank When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves: Are you comfortable with: Chaos – startups are disorganized Uncertainty – startups never go per plan Are you: Resilient – at times you will fail – badly.

Cofounder 223

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 223

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

And to his credit (which I only appreciated years later) he agreed that while he was going to start a search, I could be a candidate for the job. I was agile enough to keep up with innumerable changes and I was changing lots of things myself. Declare them cultural co-founders. Your original hires embody the company culture.

Part-Time VPE 333

Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 333

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

These misses weren’t in some tangential markets – missing search, mobile and the cloud were directly where Microsoft users were heading. Execution and Organization of Core Businesses. It wasn’t that Microsoft didn’t have smart engineers working on search, media, mobile and cloud. Yet a very smart CEO missed all of these.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

These misses weren’t in some tangential markets – missing search, mobile and the cloud were directly where Microsoft users were heading. Execution and Organization of Core Businesses. It wasn’t that Microsoft didn’t have smart engineers working on search, media, mobile and cloud. Yet a very smart CEO missed all of these.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2017

LESSON #1: Equip your business with a portfolio map and a 21st century org chart. With industries from banking to transportation being transformed and, in some instances, undermined by new business models and technology, executives are smart to wonder, “Are we next?” The innovation motto is “Fail fast.”

Lean 245

Lean Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 245

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 7, 2016

Founders soon learn that customers only spend real money for solutions rather than ideas. Success requires moving your passion quickly from the idea to the business implementation. Google , for example, was not the first Internet search provider (think Yahoo!, Enable team members to run the business as their own.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Architecture Agile Business Model 120

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

Modern entrepreneurship began at the turn of this century with the observation that startups aren’t smaller versions of large companies – large companies at their core execute known business models, while startups search for scalable business models. This can be a big bet!

Lean 333

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 333

Steve Blank

AUGUST 25, 2015

He’s working to get his agency to adopt Lean and the Horizon 1, 2, and 3 innovation language (Horizon 1 executes current business models, Horizon 2 extends current business models and Horizon 3 searches for new business models ) and was now building a Lean innovation pipeline created out of my I-Corps/Lean LaunchPad classes.

Lean 120

Lean Entrepreneur Business Model Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

In the last five years “ Lean Startup ” methodologies have enabled entrepreneurs to efficiently build a startup by searching for product/market fit rather than blindly trying to execute. However in practice most companies treated the Three Horizons like they are simply incremental execution of the same business model.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

What I saw reminded me of some of the best and worst things I did as a founder. Tossing their agile development process and at times their entire business model in the air, the company would go into fire-drill mode and engineering would start working on whatever his latest insight was. A Pivot a Week. he’d declare. “We

Founder 317

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 317

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

The first will be commodity businesses that are valued for their ability to execute their current business model. The second class will be firms with a demonstrated ability to continually innovate and reinvent their business models. These innovations do not require change in a company’s existing business model.

Private Equity 326

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 326

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2020

They operated this way because their existing business models didn’t allow them to initially profit from those opportunities – so they ignored them – and continued to chase higher profitability in more-demanding segments. Therefore, for founders, entrepreneurship wasn’t a job, but a calling.

Lean 429

Lean Business Model Government Agile 429

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

It dawned on me that the plans were a symptom of a larger problem: we were executing business plans when we should first be searching for business models. So what would a search process for a business model look like? And in 2003 the Haas Business School at U.C.

Lean 318

Lean Georgia Michigan Business Model 318

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

The key things I want students to take from the class are: Understand that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a profitable business model. Learn how to put together a business model , not a business plan. Class Logistics. As described in the previous post , this is a hands-on class.

Business Model 230

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 230

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Finally, I’ll write about 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. To begin with, the product development model completely ignores a fundamental truth about startups and new products.

Customer Development 241

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 241

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2012

I thought they might be worth enumerating here: A Startup Is a Temporary Organization Designed to Search. for A Repeatable and Scalable Business Model. Pair Customer Development with Agile Development. Failure is an Integral Part of the Search for the Business Model. Preserve Cash While Searching.

Customer Development 329

Customer Development Developer Customer Cofounder 329

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

In this post we’re going to offer a new definition of why startups exist : a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. A Business Model. Ok, but what is a business model ? A business model describes how your company creates, delivers and captures value.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Modern entrepreneurship began at the turn of the 21 st century with the observation that startups aren’t smaller versions of large companies – large companies at their core execute known business models, while startups search for scalable business models. This circular loop can cause them to churn, pivot, and fail.

Customer 421

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 421

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2010

A place to start would be by recognizing the fundamental difference between an existing company and a startup: existing companies execute business models, while startups search for a business model. (Or Therefore the very foundations of teaching entrepreneurship should start with how to search for a business model.

Agile 251

Agile Business Model Customer Development Lean 251

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model.

Silicon Valley 292

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 292

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. So far, I have found "lean startup" works better with the entrepreneurs Ive talked to than "agile startup" or even "extreme startup.") Of course, many startups are capital efficient and generally frugal.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 263

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 The three drivers of growth for your business model. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?) He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Reinventing the board meeting may allow venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. Founders operate in a chaotic regime.

Silicon Valley 284

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 284

Steve Blank

MAY 10, 2011

What really matters are the business model canvas diagrams in the body and appendix of each presentation. By comparing the changes the teams made week-to-week-week in their business model canvas diagrams, you’ll see the dynamics of entrepreneurship, as they iterate and Pivot over time. in one quarter. What Surprised Us?

Lean 281

Lean Business Model Agile Customer Development 281

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

Google's search algorithm was just better, therefore they won the eyeballs, therefore they were able to monetize. Google has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on their search algorithm, the single biggest focus of the company even today, a decade after they decided that was their One Thing. The Dream Team. Existing customers.or

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2018

They are talking about everyone who chooses to be self-employed – from a corner food vendor without a high school diploma to a high-tech founder with a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford.). (By the way, as you read the conclusions keep in mind the authors are not talking just about high-tech entrepreneurs. They found: Signaling.

Entrepreneur 336

Entrepreneur Business Model Capital Gains Aggregator 336

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

There’s been a lot written about the individual characteristics of what makes a great founder , but a lot less about what makes a great founding team and how that’s different from a great founding CEO. In doing so we’ve failed to help founders understand what it takes to build a great founding team. Founders – the idea.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2013

Other the years Kevin O’Connor, former CEO and founder of DoubleClick and I got to know each other. Lean Start-up Connection: Business Model Canvas. When you enter a search query for “car insurance,” or submit details for a trip to London, you’re much more likely to end up spending money. Staying Agile.

Lean 295

Lean Agile Customer Development SEO 295

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

I teach potential founders a hands-on, experiential class called the Lean LaunchPad at Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia and Caltech. The class teaches the three basic skills all entrepreneurs need to know: business model design. agile engineering. The Founder’s Workbook. The Lean LaunchPad course online. Find it here.

Open Source 335

Open Source Silicon Valley Lean Customer Development 335