Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

In previous posts I’ve talked about what the combination of Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Methodologies mean to startups and intrapreneurs in large companies; it’s the beginning of entrepreneurship as a science with its own rules and methodologies. Teaching In the Big Apple.

Customer Development 270

Customer Development Business Model Developer Design 270

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

No, the conversation was about to get more interesting. We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. This methodology forces rapid hypothesis testing and Customer Development by getting out of the building while building the product. billion U.S.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

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. Even if they did, what if the assumption – that we had developed a better approach to teaching entrepreneurship – was simply mistaken?

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Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

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. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter? Market Type changes everything.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2021

He was trying to sell the “story” of Customer Discovery as part of the Lean Methodology to his CEO by explaining how discovery worked with the business model canvas, agile engineering, pivots and MVPs. But talking about the method to others is not the same as “doing” Customer Discovery. Lessons Learned.

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Street Smart Product Manager

NOVEMBER 2, 2014

Many of my free product help calls are about ways to pursue customer development and gather VOC, bootstrap new product efforts, and apply lean principles to product management activities. Long Live “Agile Conversations” appeared first on Street Smart Product Manager. The post RIP PRDs.

Agile 46

Agile Conversion Lean Bootstrapping 46

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ) Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique.

Oakland 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. If youre worried about disappointing some potential customers - dont be. Oops - there went several precious weeks of development effort down the drain.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

For the last 75 years products (both durable goods and software) were built via Waterfall development. In the last few years Agile and “Continuous Deployment” has replaced Waterfall and transformed how companies big and small build products. Smart companies will figure out how to educate their customers and communicate these changes.

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Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 329

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 30, 2013

This was intended as a personal observation, not an ageist statement, and we devolved into a conversation about brain plasticity. No longer is it sufficient to learn a programming language, its idiosyncrasies, its libraries, and its associated development tools. The essay follows. What do you think?

Technology 168

Technology Coder Semantic Social Media 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

The Five Whys for Start-Ups - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review Root cause analysis and preventive maintenance are concepts we expect to see in a factory setting. As start-ups scale, this agility will be lost unless the founders maintain a consistent investment in that discipline. Expo SF (May.

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. The Customer is a Genius Then instead of talking about our products he segued the conversation into their products. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Heres an excerpt: The Startups Rules of Speed - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review Every startup that achieves success eventually faces a critical moment — whether to speed up or slow down. Expo SF (May.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Street Smart Product Manager

NOVEMBER 2, 2014

Many of my free product help calls are about ways to pursue customer development and gather VOC, bootstrap new product efforts, and apply lean principles to product management activities. Long Live “Agile Conversations” The post RIP PRDs.

Agile 22

Agile Conversion Bootstrapping Lean 22

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. Unfortunately, the video of our sllconf conversation is not online (due to technical problems), but we have a physical tape backup which we are endeavoring to get online soon.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

Id be honored to have you join the conversation. The Conversation - Harvard Business Review For most of us, the phrase management science conjures up a decidedly non-entrepreneurial image, and for good reason. Read the rest at The Conversation - Harvard Business Review. Id be honored to have you join the conversation.

San Francisco 119

San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

Im excited that well get more than the usual few minutes of Q&A, so come with a healthy appetite for conversation. If you or your company is interested in sponsoring someone with a scholarship to travel to the expo and contribute to the conversation, please leave a comment or let me know. You heard me right.

Lean 76

Lean San Francisco Web Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule. As a result, potential customers are being turned away; they can only afford to engage with the customers that are best qualified.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The goal is to have split-testing be a continuous part of our development process, so much so that it is considered a completely routine part of developing a new feature. I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2019

Followed by an 8-minute slide presentation follow their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. 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. Hacking for Conservation and Development at Duke followed.

Oakland 266

Oakland Lean SBIR Afghanistan 266

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

“I’ve been running our company, cycling through Customer Discovery and Validation and the board suggested that I was running out of bandwidth and needed some help in closing our initial orders. I knew where this conversation was going. agile enough to deal with daily change, operating “without a map”. Yeah, and they were great.

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Startup Business Model Customer Development Bandwidth 312

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

If you look at the top 3 online retailers by conversion rate, none of these are award-winning designs : [link] [link] [link] However, they convert ~25% of visitors to customers. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.)

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 29, 2010

The way forward requires getting everyone together in a room, and having a conversation about where were headed. My aspiration with the Lean Startup methodology has always been to provide such a framework, so that we have more intelligent conversations about what works and what doesnt for startups. Thats what this conference is for.

San Francisco 120

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review Way back when the money was doled out, the team made a compelling pitch about the large market that was going to adopt their new innovative product or service. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. I suggested the best place to start the conversation is with the 21 st century definition of a startup: A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. for new product development that emphasize immediate returns.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

The response so far has been nothing short of overwhelming, and I want to especially thank those of you who participated in the survey and customer validation exercise that helped shape this event. We changed our model to B2B and adopted Agile around 2002. For now, Id like to ask a favor. Expo SF (May.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , ESL , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , ESL « Convergent Technologies: War Story 1 – Selling with Sports Scores A Wilderness of Mirrors » 17 Responses Michael F. 2 weeks in they had outsourced my job, which lead to an awkward conversation. Reply Create.

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Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 245

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

Turns out, they were incredibly well-credentialed graduate students who had, in fact, developed some interesting new robotics technology. If you find yourself getting asked non-key questions, try to use your answers to steer the conversation back to the key questions. But you wouldnt have known that from their pitch.) Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. The process they use to guide their search is customer development. They would: Blog their Customer Development progress as a narrative. Victor Hugo. When The Boardroom is Bits.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

User-centric and interaction design, test-driven development, continuous integration, services-oriented architectures - the list goes on. Yet a huge class of modern software projects are being developed in a very different context. The economics of these process trade-offs are discussed in the Principles of Product Development Flow.)

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

So I generally feel right at home in these conversations. All successful media companies had at their heart a series of editors, producers, and agents tasked with discovering and developing new talent. When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. Is that a lot? Is that good?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

davemcclure : amazing concepts on Continuous Development => "Cluster Immune System" @EricRies #LeanStartup @fbFund [link] dalelarson : Because most features take longer to argue and prioritize than to build. Use some customer development to find out. Danger, Will Robinson. Ive been there: is it me or my cofounder thats crazy?

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

For example, say that your business model calls for a 4% conversion rate – as ours did initially at IMVU. After a few months of early beta at IMVU, we discovered that our actual conversion rate was about 0.4%. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

In fact, unless you are adding capacity to a bottleneck in your development process, you probably should not be hiring at all. Given that most recruiting channels are pay-for-performance, its usually cheaper, too, because it has a lower conversion rate. Second, a lot of work that you do is actually not value-creating - its waste.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 2, 2010

By all accounts, the conversation was a success. By all accounts, the conversation was a success. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? I certainly had a great time, and the early Twitter reactions seem positive. Of course, you can judge for yourself. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 149

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 149