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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

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.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

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 267

SVPG

OCTOBER 14, 2014

Hopefully everyone understands that in technology companies, continuous innovation is not an option. ” I first witnessed this many years ago when I was an engineer for HP, building platform and tool technology products for “the enterprise.” Or they continue to turn out more features that don’t make a difference.

Product 91

Product Technical Review Engineer CTO Hire 91

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2020

His message was that existing companies are great at sustaining technologies and products but were ignoring the threat of disruption. He explained that companies have a penchant for continually improving sustaining products by adding more features to solve existing customer problems, and while this maximized profit, it was a trap.

Lean 431

Lean Business Model Government Agile 431

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Boyd emphasized the importance of agility in combat: "the key to victory is to be able to create situations wherein one can make appropriate decisions more quickly than ones opponent." As Ive written previously , lean startups are built upon three main trends: Technology commoditization. Agile software development.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

What does your Chief Technology Officer do all day? When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. Heres my take.

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CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. Your design or ad agencies can impress you with their awards, but if you’re not moving product or creating demand, you’ve missed the point.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

But the bubble mantra of get “big fast” and “first mover advantage” demanded tens of millions more to create a “brand.” Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development. Filed under: Technology , Venture Capital.

Internet 335

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.) We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. to optimize this search. What are hypotheses?

Wiki 316

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 316

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

What those sites have in common (despite their very different audiences) is that something is causing their customers to become addicted to their product, and so no matter how they acquire a new customer, they tend to keep them. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

They used Customer and Agile development to search for a scalable and repeatable business model to become a large company. A scalable startup typically requires external “risk&# capital to create market demand and scale. Customer and Agile development to find the business model. Lessons Learned.

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Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 299

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.) However, going through the customer development process showed me the danger in that kind of thinking.

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Lean New York City New York Customer Development 274

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Playing with new technologies. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. Seeing whats possible.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

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. Everyone should be articulate and agile in describing and demoing the products.)

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 136

Transformify

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

In light of all these events and rapidly changing business environment, I had the pleasure to discuss Work Reimagined with Chris Port, COO, Boomi , a Dell Technologies business. Leveraging the capabilities of Boomi Flow, the company’s cloud-native solution focused on accelerating customer journeys through low-code development.

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Cloud Agile Customer Development Employee 86

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. The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. There are none so blind as those who will not see. Jonathan Swift. Here’s how.

Silicon Valley 297

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 297

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

I hope to show why lean and agile techniques actually reduce the negative impacts of technical debt and increase our ability to take advantage of its positive effects. Just as a business incurs some debt to take advantage of a market opportunity developers may incur technical debt to hit an important deadline. He’s right.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 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. The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. There are none so blind as those who will not see. Jonathan Swift. Here’s how.

Silicon Valley 270

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 270

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2010

One of the classes I teach in the engineering school at Stanford is E145: the Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship , an introduction to building a scalable startup. Distribution, Demand Creation and Partnerships. Customer Discovery. By design we didn’t give them too much Customer Development theory.

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Intellectual Property Business Model Customer Development Distribution 257

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

The public markets for venture-backed technology stocks never really recovered after the collapse of the dot-com boom. New, agile and adroit venture firms with new business models have emerged to deal with the reality that 1) web 2.0 Other VC’s who invest in Information Technology have taken a different approach. What About Us?

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Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 303

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

A few of the detailed case studies include: Tech legend Bill Gross building an MVP in 1999 to test demand for online car sales, which grew into CarsDirect.com. Scott Summitt iteratively leveraging the emerging technologies of digital fabrication and 3d-scanning to change people's lives. It's a big tent.

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Lean Entrepreneur Agile San Francisco 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

The other revels in the world as we all know it will be someday: limitless distribution enabled by new technologies, the importance of collaborative filters, and on-demand availability of all content for end-users. But thanks to new distribution technologies like the Kindle, we will soon. Gatekeepers are overloaded.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

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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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

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. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 260

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 13, 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. The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. Board meetings that guide startups haven't changed since the early 1900's. Here's how.

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Silicon Valley Balance Sheet Metrics Early Stage 117

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 17, 2016

Instead, Facebook is the most popular social channel for customer service questions and is used twice as often as Twitter, which is the second most-used social media site. If you don’t have social as part of your customer service strategy, your business is missing out.

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Customer Singapore Advisory Board Asia 100

andrewchenblog.com

MARCH 10, 2010

Coupled with A/B testing, customer development, and thinking through business problems in a scientific, hypothesis-driven way, you end up with a powerful cocktail of techniques to build a modern startup in the most iterative way possible. Technology rises and falls on real-world, end-user customer feedback.

Technical Review 47

Technical Review Design Las Vegas Product 47

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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Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 239

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Its an academic treatise that tries to answer a seemingly straightforward question: after World War II, why did Silicon Valley become the undisputed leader of the technology world, while Bostons Route 128 corridor did not. Worldwide developments based on this research led to modern radio communication, television, and the electronics age.

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Refreshing to finally see lean and agile thinking emerge in product/business-floors and not only in technology. Critical also, as the lean company/start-up can not be lean by just using lean principles in IT and not in Product Development/Management - a common misinterpretation of the Toyota Production System. Thank you.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

The six key attributes spell ABCDEF: Agility. When talking about their past experience, candidates with agility will know why they did what they did in a given situation. To probe for agility, you have to ask the candidate questions involving something that they know little about. Any advice? Excellent post. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

Of their early customers, about 1/3 of them turned out to be high school or middle school teachers. What all these teachers had in common were two things: they were technology early adopters that were willing to take a chance on a new software product, and they all had similar problems organizing their classes and students.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 60

Steve Blank

MAY 10, 2011

These diagrams are the visual representation of the how and the what a team learned in the class – how they tested their hypotheses by getting out of the building using the Customer Development process and what they learned about each part of their business model. The students were challenged to get users, orders, customers, etc.

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Lean Business Model Agile Customer Development 285

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

For example, should we invest a week of engineering time into making our website more failure-proof (which were pretty sure will pay off right away) or into experimenting with a new technology (that might pay off in months, years, or never)? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Its common to find a hacker at the heart of almost any successful technology company. As the company grows, hes the go-to person for almost everything technical, and so hes very much in demand. A really good technology executive can notice problems like the ones Im talking about today and address them proactively.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94