Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

Business models allow agile and opportunistic founders to keep score of the Pivots in their search for a repeatable business model. They’re a match for the “How to write a business plan” classes that are offered. Filed under: Customer Development Manifesto , Durant versus Sloan: Startups Verus Companies , Teaching.

Business Plan 312

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 312

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

I earnestly believe that large corporations should emulate Lean Startups (Business model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering.) However, they need to match a top-level (board, CEO, exec staff) agreement on strategy and structure. Lessons Learned.

Programming 265

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 265

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

A decade later, I began to teach the foundations of Lean, first at UC Berkeley (Customer Development) and then at Stanford using cases and business plans. Lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering). Let’s Teach Lean Via Experiential Learning. experiential.

Lean 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 29, 2018

When you outsource your IT projects or hire an offshore development team, it comes with many benefits. For example, an agile software development lifecycle model encourages self-organization and motivation rather than the delegation of authority and a seniority hierarchy. This model has shown higher productivity levels.

Developer 93

Developer Offshore Software Developers Software Development 93

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2023

This meant the class was team-based, Lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering) and experiential – where the students, rather than being presented with all of the essential information, must discover that information rapidly for themselves. Take a look below.

Lean 294

Lean Chile Ukraine Spain 294

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

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

In the last few years Agile and “Continuous Deployment” has replaced Waterfall and transformed how companies big and small build products. Agile is a tremendous advance in reducing time, money and wasted product development effort – and in having products better match customer needs.

Continuous Deployment 329

Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 329

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2014

It has three parts: a business model canvas to frame hypotheses, customer development to get out of the building to test those hypotheses and agile engineering to build minimum viable products. Teaches you how to use Customer Development to test it. Integration with Customer Development and Lean Startup.

Business Model 335

Business Model Design Customer Development Lean 335

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.

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

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 320

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 320

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? Customer Development and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

This makes sense in a company where your customers, channel and competition are known. But for startups, business plans fail to match the chaotic reality they encounter in the real world. Yet year after year, decade after decade, VC’s would watch as no startup business plan survived first contact with customers.

Business Model 263

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 263

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

Ideally we attempt to match the guests with the case or class session subject. For example, when we taught the value of getting out of the building and agile development, we had Eric Ries talk about the Lean Startup. So we tried to break up our lectures with guest speakers.

Business Model 226

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

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.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Go on an agile diet quickly. With a product development team that is not shipping, any agile methodology will surface major problems quickly. Force anyone who is in customer contact to take the role of the Product Owner and insist that they deliver something new on a short regular interval. (For Perhaps thats a fallacy?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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. All the presentations are worth a watch. Team: Panacea.

Oakland 266

Oakland Lean SBIR Afghanistan 266

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

Ill do my best to match deserving people up with appropriate sponsors, and Ill be glad to recognize those that give on the blog and at the conference itself. Although Im not a developer, I am captivated by the lean and agile start-up model that you write about. Combining agile development with customer developm.

Lean 76

Lean San Francisco Web Continuous Deployment 76

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. He was constantly in front of customers, listening, selling, installing and learning. It seemed like once a week Yuri would come back from a customer meeting brimming with new insights. Filed under: Customer Development.

Founder 316

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 316

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 28, 2017

The goal of the class is to expose students to the basics of the Lean Methodology – Business Model Design , Customer Development and Agile Engineering. They were busily testing their hypotheses about customer segments and value proposition, seeing if they could find product/market fit. What was critical?

Lean 120

Lean Customer Development Business Model Agile 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. The first reaction from my CEO was, “that’s why you’re running the department.” And yes, we could have built a top-down, command-and-control hierarchy. on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

Now the company is in crisis mode because the rest of the organization (product development, marketing, etc.) Without the revenue to match its expenses, the company is in now danger of running out of money. Business Model Design and Customer Development Stack. Pivots By Firing Executives. No one gets fired.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Steve Blank

AUGUST 4, 2016

They’ll learn how to apply “lean startup” principles, (“mission model canvas,” “customer development,” and “agile engineering”) to discover and validate agency and user needs and to continually build iterative prototypes to test whether they understood the problem and solution. Lessons Learned.

Lean 160

Lean Government Agile Africa 160

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. What Drives Innovation?

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 26, 2016

Today these potential adversaries are able to harness the power of social networks, encryption, GPS, low-cost drones, 3D printers, simpler design and manufacturing processes, agile and lean methodologies, ubiquitous Internet and smartphones. Deliver minimum viable products that match DOD/IC customer needs in an extremely short time.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley North Korea Agile Lean 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. In 1962 Wheelon left for a new job as the first director of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology where he was responsible for development of OXCART , the A-12 Spyplane, and three major satellite reconnaissance systems.

Silicon Valley 171

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 171

Steve Blank

AUGUST 4, 2016

They’ll learn how to apply “lean startup” principles, (“mission model canvas,” “customer development,” and “agile engineering”) to discover and validate agency and user needs and to continually build iterative prototypes to test whether they understood the problem and solution. Lessons Learned.

Lean 120

Lean Government Agile Africa 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

In a subscription business, maybe your attrition starts matching your acquisition, balancing like magic. In an eyeballs business, you just cant seem to acquire or activate that next step-up of customers. Or your cost of customer acquisition just magically floats up to match your customer lifetime value.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2009

Gathering real-world feedback from customers is a core concept of Customer Development as well as the Lean Startup. When I asked him if he actually had personally left the building and talked to these potential customers, or even had gotten them on the phone, he sounded confused. Customer needs are non-deterministic.

Metrics 239

Metrics Customer Customer Development Lean 239

OnlyOnce

AUGUST 12, 2013

A few years ago, people started talking a lot more about User Experience (UX) as a new crossover discipline between design and engineering, and our experience at Return Path has been that UX is an incredibly powerful tool in our arsenal to build great technical products via lean/agile methods. It has a beginning but it doesn’t have an end.”

Lean 94

Lean Agile B2B Metrics 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

The idea is that great product visionaries dont need to listen to customers or test their ideas against reality. For one, it doesnt match my experience having worked with some true visionaries at all. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment 60

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 startups require significantly less capital to start, 2) exits for venture firms are predominately acquisitions, and 3) a venture firm with a smaller fund <$150M matches these exits. are example of this class of firm.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

This feedback is a nasty trap, and it’s just how this room full of otherwise rational adults wound up in a screaming match about rounded corners. This feedback is a nasty trap, and it’s just how this room full of otherwise rational adults wound up in a screaming match about rounded corners. It was painful to watch.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

The Startup Lawyer

MARCH 17, 2012

Outsourcing your startup’s early technical development to a dev shop is like riding an elephant in a horseback polo match. You’re on a big beast, but your lack of agility will prevent you from scoring. Most of these early “partnerships” never work, regardless of how the startup compensates the dev shop.

Cofounder 92

Cofounder Vesting Equity Agile 92

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 17, 2016

At 1 million strong, the millennials in Singapore are a sizeable demographic with spending power to match, their online behaviour and appetite for digital experiences with brands are reshaping the very fabric of customer service delivery. hours per day, on their mobile phones.

Customer 100

Customer Singapore Advisory Board Asia 100

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Its power is matched only by the amount of confusion that it causes, because its actually quite hard to do. Refreshing to finally see lean and agile thinking emerge in product/business-floors and not only in technology. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thank you.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

However, its not very useful to mix and match features from different models. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Knowing which model youre in can make these decisions a little less excruciating. Better to set up complete experiments that are themselves internally coherent.

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

We agreed that all her founding CEOs seemed to have the same set of personality traits – tenacious, passionate, relentless, resilient, agile, and comfortable operating in chaos. Does any of this match your experience or people you know? I coach agile teams for a living, and I do most of my work with start-ups.

Founder 297

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 297