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 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

The classes are built on the Lean Startup methodology: Customer Discovery, Agile Engineering and the Business/Mission Model Canvas. So how do our students get out of the building to talk to customers to do Customer Discovery when they can’t get out of the building? All you have are a series of untested hypotheses.

Customer 419

Customer Business Model Restful Video 419

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

A business model diagram also shows how the product gets distributed to your customers and how money flows back into your company. And it shows your company’s cost structures, how each department interacts with the others and where your company fits with other companies or partners to implement your business. Who are our partners?

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 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

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

This makes sense in a company where your customers, channel and competition are known. And your revenue plan is something more than a hallucination. Yet year after year, decade after decade, VC’s would watch as no startup business plan survived first contact with customers. It takes a ton of face-face customer interactions.

Business Model 267

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 267

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

For decades startups were managed by pretending the company would follow a predictable path (revenue plan, scale, etc.) In fact, for decades if you drew this diagram on day one of a startup VC’s would nod sagely and everyone would get to work heading to first customer ship. The Revenue Plan – The Third Fatal Assumption.

Burn Rate 251

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 251

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. Second, and full disclosure, I’ve invested in a few of these funds ; and third my teaching partner Ann Miura-Ko is a partner in one of these funds. Quickly iterate the product in front of customers. Here’s why.

Lean 263

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 263

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 321

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 321

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. They’ve learned the best distribution channel to get the product from their company to the customer. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.) Now we’re known for “making the numbers,” living on our past successes.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

In fact, by the start of class they had ~$750K in revenue for 2011 – not quite Facebook but a nice small business. Take a look through the slides below and see how their business model evolved with feedback from customers, channels and partners. What Do You Mean You Only Spoke to 1 Customer?

North America 120

North America Lean Customer Development Distribution 120

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

VC’s invested their limited partners’ “risk capital” in a portfolio of startups in exchange for illiquid stock. Until 1995 startups going public typically had a track record of revenue and profits. Suddenly there was a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit. Netscape’s 1995 IPO changed the rules.

Venture Capital 303

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 303

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

From the point of view of scientists and engineers in a university lab, too often entrepreneurship in all its VC-driven glory – income statements, balance sheets, business plans, revenue models, 5-year forecasts, etc. They’ll explore the best way to deliver the product to customers, the resources required, as well as competing technologies.

Engineer 284

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 284

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 1, 2011

From the point of view of scientists and engineers in a university lab, too often entrepreneurship in all its VC-driven glory - income statements, balance sheets, business plans, revenue models - seems like another planet. And they'll do this using the business model-customer development-agile development solution stack.

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Balance Sheet Lean 118

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

We Changed Our Mind In 1966, 10 years after Hewlett’s memo, Hewlett Packard’s revenue and headcount had grown ten fold; $200 million and 11,000 employees – all from test and measurement equipment. The original Hewlett Packard which made test and measurement products was spun-out and renamed Agilent. Agilent is a $5.8

Silicon Valley 186

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 186

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2013

We figured our key partners would include consumers (to contribute data much like Wikipedia’s users), manufacturers (to keep their product information updated) and the US government (to supply datasets to power our content). Regarding revenue, we made a big bet on “purchase intent.” Lean Start-up Connection: Customer Development.

Lean 299

Lean Agile Customer Development SEO 299

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

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. The Proof Is In The Revenue. Naturally, a big part of the go-to-market includes partnering with other players in the market.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. These three tools allow startups to focus on the parts of an early stage venture that matter the most: the product, product/market fit, customer acquisition, revenue and cost model, channels and partners.

Oakland 329

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 329

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Here at Palo Alto Software in 2007 and 2008, we embraced these planning concepts and moved towards a more agile planning process. Also, the “customer relationships” section didn’t seem to fit for many traditional businesses. At the time, we used Business Plan Pro and Basecamp for this. Do startups have a manual?

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2013

With new hypotheses and the help of a local UX Designer from Cleveland’s agile methods experts, LeanDog , the pivots began. Using paper templates, students worked out user experiences and taped them to the wall next to their drawings of customer archetypes. Next time, I am going to talk to people without my partner so it’s one-to-one.

Lean 310

Lean SCRUM Ohio Cleveland 310

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Should you charge from day one, testing the revenue model first? What about companies, like Siebel, that started with partner distribution first? Systematically testing the assumptions that support the vision is called customer development , and it’s a parallel process to product development.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2013

With new hypotheses and the help of a local UX Designer from Cleveland’s agile methods experts, LeanDog , the pivots began. Using paper templates, students worked out user experiences and taped them to the wall next to their drawings of customer archetypes. Next time, I am going to talk to people without my partner so it’s one-to-one.

Lean 202

Lean SCRUM Ohio Cleveland 202

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2019

The class was unique in that it was 1) team-based, 2) experiential, 3) lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering). When we started this class, the concept of Lean (business models, customer development, agile, pivots, mvp’s) was new to everyone.

Lean 254

Lean Business Model Balance Sheet Video 254

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

Another path is to put product development on hold until the customer development team can find customers who can provide adequate feedback. The risk here is lost time and no product for customers to provide feedback against.

Customer 119

Customer Advisory Board Engineer Cofounder 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

But it became clear that if IMVU was ever going to become a mainstream business, we had to effectively fire these early customers. Suffice to say that our partners, vendors, and most importantly regular mainstream customers all found the idea disturbing. The reasons were many and complex, so I won’t rehash them all here.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158