Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

NYU Engineering Commencement Speech. Thank you for the opportunity to address you on your graduation from this esteemed engineering school. When I retired after 21 years working in 8 startups, I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the business school at the University of California Berkeley. Let me give you an example.

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Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I lived through the time when working in my first job in Ann Arbor Michigan we had to get out a map to find out that San Jose was not only in Puerto Rico but there was a city with that same name in California. When James Watt started the industrial revolution with the steam engine in 1775 no one said, “This is the day everything changes.”

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Computer hardware companies were faced with their customers asking for low-cost (relatively) desktop computers they had no experience in building. Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.)

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

I concluded that my first job was to understand what Cray’s markets, customers and applications. When I learned that Cray users would be giving papers at the Society of Petroleum Engineering conference in Denver the next day, I got on a plane to listen and learn.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

After these slides, these VC’s recognized that this company had dramatically reduced risk and built a startup that was agile, resilient and customer-centric. The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Your “Customer Development Process&# has really resonated for me.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

In my last post I described my approach to one of the three classes I teach at Stanford in the engineering school: Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship. A partner allows me the flexibility to miss a session or two (my job as a California Coastal Commissioner meets three days every month up and down the coast of California.)

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. 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.

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Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

Signs of Success One of the things you do right in a startup, is you move from one cheap and cramped building to another as you grow, with desks, cubicles and engineers piled cheek to jowl. Engineers were packed in cubicles or desks right on top of each other? Now every engineer can have their own office.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering. My office is in the Terman Engineering Building.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. 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.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. The Army offered Fred Terman, the Dean of Engineering at Stanford, a $5M contract to build an electronics countermeasures lab. HP had an ethical culture, entrepreneurial spirit, and deep Stanford engineering department connections.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

I know that this all seems obvious now with the movements started by Steven Blank ( Four Steps of Epiphany ) with the whole Customer Development processes / Lean Startup movements also popularized by people like Eric Ries. I see many CEO’s, product managers and marketing types out in the field talking with customers and users.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 7, 2012

Today, the first half of the Stanford Engineering Lean LaunchPad Class gave their final presentations. The goal is for them is to observe this class, then host and teach the next round of 50 NSF Innovation Corps scientist/engineer teams in July. Only in California! Here are the first five. It Feels Like 20 Years Ago Today.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

The Lean LaunchPad class teaches students how to build a Lean Startup using business model design, customer development and agile engineering. Teams have to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week.) I gave Frank the same advice I offered all the other universities who asked. Spread it Widely.

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steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Github - Free public repositories, collaborator management, issue tracking, wikis, downloads, code review, graphs Pivotal Tracker – Agile project management tool that enables real time collaboration. WebSequenceDiagrams - sketch sequence diagrams. Bontq – hosted bug tracking and project management needs.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2017

Each of their slide presentation follow their customer discovery journey. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. of Management Science and Engineering. 21 st Century Frogman.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2018

Each of their slide presentations follow their customer discovery journey. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. The teams presented in front of several hundred people in person and online.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

You don’t get grades for having resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition and tenacity. From the king of customer development, Steve Blank: [.] Reply Harvey , on April 11, 2009 at 7:05 pm Said: Some of the best engineers I hired out of school were not 3.5+ You just get successful.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

Fourth , would the same Lean Startup methodology (business model design, customer development and agile engineering) used in the Lean LaunchPad and NSF I-Corps class work here? Result: Hell yes. Fifth , would other schools be interested in offering this class? 15 more schools are in the pipeline. Lessons Learned.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

Fourth , would the same Lean Startup methodology (business model design, customer development and agile engineering) used in the Lean LaunchPad and NSF I-Corps class work here? Result: Hell yes. Fifth , would other schools be interested in offering this class? 15 more schools are in the pipeline. Lessons Learned.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 6, 2009

Encouraged by their Dean, Fred Terman, scientists and engineers left Stanford Electronics Research Laboratory to set up companies to build microwave tubes and systems for the military. doing postdoctoral internships, supervised by Stanford engineering faculty members or senior research associates (staff.)

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

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www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Firebase : Are all your developers front-end engineers? Google Custom Search Engine. Google App Engine. Search Engine Optimization Tools. usability testing for designers and developers. Google App Engine â?? Codeacademy. Steve Blank.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 10, 2009

———————– In the 1950′s Stanford University’s Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) continued to develop innovative microwave tubes for the U.S. This next product, the Traveling Wave Tube, would have a major impact on electronic intelligence. Fred Terman was just getting warmed up.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Many great engineers Ive worked with (especially the type I talked about in the hackers lament ) seem to think that if they get along well with someone in an interview, theyll be a good addition to the team. I experienced this when I was the engineering manager at a small company. Tell us what youve learned in those different contexts.

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usersknow.blogspot.com

APRIL 30, 2010

The answer to this question must be: I have enough design, engineering, QA, and customer support resources to dedicate to supporting and improving this feature without causing me to neglect any of the other important features that I’m already supporting. ▼ April (5) 7 Ways Design Can Speed Up Your Product Developmen.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I started my last company with 100% off-shore resources because I could never have completed Customer Development at a reasonable cost of money or regulatory burden had I employed US Citizens. Truth be told, we've got defense contractors here just like California does too. September 9, 2009 12:36 AM Richard Tibbetts said.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

We decided to work with our engineering department to create the Potreo benchmarks because we really wanted to see how our boards performed with the four applications customers told us that they used; Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator and PageMaker. These were applications we had never seen or ran before when the boards were designed.

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Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

And the same time we were also going to do all the other strategic stuff about pricing, positioning, promotion and customer discovery and validation to help engineering understand customer needs. Later on in this same company’s life, sales will become the pointy end and product development moves to a supporting role.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 28, 2009

Think of a plane the length of a 767 airliner (but with 30 foot longer wings and 8 engines rather than 2) whose only mission was to FedEx 70,000 pounds of nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union. Sure the rest of the stories diverge though… can’t really imagine a Soviet counterpart to the Customer Development method.

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market-by-numbers.com

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Market By Numbers on Twitter | Entries RSS | Comments RSS Market By Numbers High-Tech Marketing and Customer Development Home What is Customer Development? The “encroachment&# of business or engineering on design is (theoretically) dependent on the driving force, rather than personal bias. Please Share!

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Silicon Valley’s development is intimately entwined with the long history of industrialization and innovation in the larger San Francisco Bay Area. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Expo SF (May.

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SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Who better to answer than the company's engineering lead. The Ultimate Combination of Startup Business Development Methods - ArcticStartup , November 16, 2010 I've been a huge fan of Steven Blank's Customer Development methodology for a long time. New York, California different toilet, same s#@t. call to arms.

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