YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Creators of new products in environments of extreme uncertainty, startups face enormous risks. Insufficient capital, over investment, and low sales are just some of the reasons leading to this sobering statistic. Not doing so would end up in wasteful innovations and features that customers do not want.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

The disadvantage is that its methodology was based on the old waterfall model of product development and not the agile and lean methods that startups use today. It taught lean theory ( business model design , customer development and agile engineering) and practice. Seeing Is Believing. Berkeley-wide.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

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?

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

We spent time out in the marketplace talking with customers, looking at their solutions, comparing ourselves with our competition and then squirreling ourselves away in our offices designing our next set of features. Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. Tim started to change our processes.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

This process forced companies to release and launch products by model years, and market new and “improved” versions. In the last few years Agile and “Continuous Deployment” has replaced Waterfall and transformed how companies big and small build products. The Old Days – Waterfall Product Development.

Continuous Deployment 329

Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 329

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

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. 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.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. Even worse, agile wasnt really helping me ship higher quality software.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

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. 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

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. existing enterprises are establishing corporate innovation groups. StageGate Process.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

In an enterprise sales context, this is called a "repeatable and scalable sales process" - once you know how to do this, your company can graduate from early adopters and make an attempt at the mainstream. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Check your assumptions, what went wrong?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

You can almost set your watch to six months or so after first customer ship, when Sales starts missing its “numbers,” the board gets concerned and Marketing tries to “make up a better story.” Having failed to deliver the promised revenue, the VP of Sales in a startup who does not make the “numbers” becomes an ex-VP of Sales.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.) and how to price the product. for new product development that emphasize immediate returns. Now we’re known for “making the numbers,” living on our past successes.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

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. PayPal, under the leadership of David Marcus and Bill Scott, re-defining and re-engineering itself by embracing Lean Startup to improve the product experience. It's a big tent.

Lean 167

Lean Entrepreneur Agile San Francisco 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

kaChing says they had the fortitude to make quick decisions and stay the course not just because they’d observed how people were using the marketplace, but also because they’d spoken with hundreds of potential and past customers. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

For example, I quickly learned that when I twittered about the event, more often than not I would make a sale. So the product development team was busy creating lots of split-tests for lots of hypotheses. That’s why we have operations alerts trigger a page, but it can also work for other customer events.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

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 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? My blog has over 14000 subscribers, for example. Is that a lot? Is that good? Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

But if that piece-parts solution is great, then its unlikely they are going to need to buy any additional products. Because this language may lead you to believe this concept is for enterprise sales only, I thought Id walk you through an example from the world of consumer electronics. Combining agile development with customer developm.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

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. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2022

The consulting firm suggested that they organize these 15 topic areas as a matrix organization, and the ballroom was filled with several hundred people from across their company – action groups and subgroups with people from across the company: engineering, manufacturing, market analysis and collection, distribution channels, and sales.

Framework 389

Framework Distribution Channel Leadership 389

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

It requires separating the product launch from the marketing launch (see Dont Launch ) as well as other staple Lean Startup tactics: minimum viable product, split-testing, customer development and the pivot. That is customer development. Eric] The marketing launch for SlideShares Pro accounts is today.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

But instead of spending the time and money to develop products on spec, TPGTEX creates mocked-up webpages that list the features of a potential new product -- such as a system for making radio-frequency identification, or RFID, labels -- along with its price. Read the rest. For that, release early, release often will suffice.

San Francisco 137

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 137

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

This can take the form of a traditional sales pipeline or a registration-activation-revenue chart. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Expo SF (May. Conference streaming, sponsors, discounted tickets.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience. Creating a company-wide feedback loop that incorporates both customer development and agile development is a challenge.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

This builds on a lot of great thinking that has come before, like the agile movements insistence that only the creation of working code counts as progress for a software development team. We set sales targets from day one, $300 the first month. As the experiments progressed, day-in-day-out we werent making sales.

San Francisco 98

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2010

To get to this Transition stage, the company needed passionate visionaries who can articulate a compelling vision, agile enough to learn and discover in real time, resilient enough to deal with countless failures, and responsive enough to capitalize on what they learned in order to secure early customers.

Agile 120

Agile Development Team Review Leadership Merger 120

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door. Later you will want to come back and create a proper sales forecast, cash flow forecast, and expense budget. The business model.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

After I retired, I began teaching Customer Development , a theory of how to reduce early stage risk in entrepreneurial ventures. Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA……………… 5. Raising Money Using Customer Development……… 47. Customer Development Manifesto.

Silicon Valley 202

Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 202

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

Key attributes of an entrepreneur on a founding team are passion, determination, resilience, tenacity, agility and curiosity. They deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers. Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career/Culture. And what is critical is trust.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Customer 420

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 420

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

When it was spun out as a a separate company, Iridium’s 1990 business plan had assumptions about potential customers, their problems and the product needed to solve that problem. They made other assumptions about the type of sales channel, partnerships and revenue model they would need. It All Came Crashing Down.

Business Plan 335

Business Plan Customer Business Model Customer Development 335

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

In particular, a marketing launch can help you do three things (courtesy, as is most of my marketing advice, of The Four Steps to the Epiphany ): Drive customers into your sales pipeline. Do some Customer Development instead. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Sometimes, a great hacker has the potential to grow into the CTO of a company, and in those cases all you need is an outside mentor who can work with them to develop those skills. At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization. Does this sound familiar? Expo SF (May.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94