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 ? And when do business planning and execution come into play?

Search 324

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 324

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.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

As a founder you start out with: 1) a vision of a product with a set of features, 2) a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? How do we finance the company, etc. Most of the time the darn customers don’t behave as you predicted. What’s the distribution channel.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. These founders have not managed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Blank , to create a scalable and repeatable sales process. Go on an agile diet quickly. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. And I tried to evaluate the idea and figure out: What did the founder really need here? Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? What went wrong?

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

A first order filter is whether the founders are aiming for a scalable startup. The question was: what did the founders want to do? Will Harvey , Eric Ries and the other founders were unequivocal – “Screw the buy-out, we’re here to build a company. One founder quit and joined Google.) Go For Broke. The Scalable Startup.

Hockey Stick 293

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 293

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.

Lean 284

Lean Business Model Agile Customer Development 284

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. A veteran board can bring 50-100x more experience into a board meeting than a first time founder. From a founder’s point of view there are three reasons for board meetings.

Silicon Valley 296

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 296

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

.” Hackernews list of “Tools of the Trade” for startups - includes over 150 SaaS tools used by startups, and over 150 comments with interesting insights from founders. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Customer service. Agile project management tool that enables real time collaboration.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

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. A veteran board can bring 50-100x more experience into a board meeting than a first time founder. From a founder’s point of view there are three reasons for board meetings.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 268

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

“If you can fix a problem for someone and do it better, quicker, and/or cheaper than your competitor, you’re off to a good start.” – Gabriel Kuperman, founder and CEO of CuePin. We created UpKeep to fill this void—a cloud-based solution that was affordable for any size business.” – Ryan Chan, founder of UpKeep.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

If you never have, you can create your own using Google Finance. If you never have, you can create your own using Google Finance. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Go ahead and try it, then come back. Youve just experienced vanity metrics hell. Expo SF (May.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

As I evolved my thinking, I started to frame the problem this way: How can we devise a product development process that allows the business leaders to take responsibility for the outcome by making conscious trade-offs? When I first encountered agile software techniques, in the form of extreme programming , I thought I had found the answer.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

New, agile and adroit venture firms with new business models have emerged to deal with the reality that 1) web 2.0 They’ve created virtual IPO’s for founders and employees via late-stage private financing. In either case Customer Development provides entrepreneurs with a methodology for being capital efficient.

Venture Capital 302

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 302

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. The goal was commercial products, but as scientists and engineers the company’s founders realized that at times the cost of experimentation was failure. Scientists and Engineers as Founders.

Engineer 310

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 310

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Compounding is not a process that most people find intuitive, and thats as true in engineering as it is in finance, so it requires a lot of encouragement in the early days to stay the course. Labels: agile , product development , Test-driven development 11comments: William Pietri said. Great post, Eric. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

In the case of an entrepreneur pitching for finance, its the same fear that has them putting on a facade and not comfortable in what they do and dont know that will see them a long way off getting funded. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

Continuous Deployment 131

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 131

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.

Vertical 124

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 124

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Expo SF (May.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

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 process, which Blank detailed in his book, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany," uses customer feedback to refine and improve a product before scaling a business. Here's how.

Silicon Valley 117

Silicon Valley Balance Sheet Metrics Early Stage 117

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

This is why so many small businesses can be financed with simple bank loans; the level of risk and uncertainty is well enough understood that a reasonably intelligent loan officer can assess its prospects. Fundamentally, the lean startup is a methodology for coping with uncertainty and unknowns with agility, poise, and ruthless efficiency.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

But lots of lawyers and finance kids in New York thought they had stable jobs that would make them rich. But lots of lawyers and finance kids in New York thought they had stable jobs that would make them rich. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 111

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 111

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Among those: plentiful financing and nerds , a culture that celebrates both failure and success, and an ethos of openness and sharing. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Expo SF (May.

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68