SoCal CTO

MAY 21, 2012

What parts Agile addresses and the big problems with Agile for early-stage startups? What is our lifetime customer value and how can we drive that up? What is our lifetime customer value and how can we drive that up? What does it cost to acquire a new customer? How do you know if you may have issues?

Fractional CTO 175

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Startup Social Network 175

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. Others dream things that never were and ask why not. George Bernard Shaw.

Agile 332

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 332

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 12, 2010

Over time at my first startup our developers encouraged us to move to Agile development. We shortened our release schedules, set nearer term targets, held people accountable more through frequent communications and we listened more to customer input. Nivi (from VentureHacks ) said it best: “Agile is about short feedback loops.

Agile 267

Agile New York City Early Stage New York 267

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 16, 2018

Companies are embarking on digital transformation journeys to experiment new digital ways of doing business — this means leveraging data smarter to enable unprecedented levels of efficiency, agility, and productivity. However, let’s take a step back and rewind a few years — or decades — to visualize the history of apps. What’s next?

SMS 143

SMS Japan Asia China 143

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

Finally, I’ll write about 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. Three to six months after first customer ship, if Sales starts missing its numbers, the board gets concerned.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. They’ve tested their hypotheses with literally hundreds of customer interviews on every continent in the world. Corporate elephants can dance.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2015

For early-stage startups, the goodwill component can easily exceed the size of all the financial elements together, or can just as easily mark a company with good financials as not investable. Research has confirmed that culture is a primary driver for financial performance, customer experience, and team productivity.

Leadership 120

Leadership Technical Review Due Diligence Valuation 120

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. The problem stems from selling each customer a custom one-time product.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

There are very few people in Silicon Valley who have such a precise grasp on what defines success of early-stage startup companies than Eric Ries. 42:20 Did agile development influence you? 57: 00 How do you rectify company mission and customer demand. 57: 00 How do you rectify company mission and customer demand.

Silicon Valley 301

Silicon Valley Lean Social Media PR 301

The Startup Magazine

DECEMBER 29, 2021

Success is also about knowing your market and customers. Startup owners often think they need not go high-tech in the early stages of the business. It covers you on fronts like inventory management, compliance, reporting, customer engagement, and more. Succeeding in the cannabis industry requires agile moves.

Agile 139

Agile Early Stage Startup Programming 139

Hearpreneur

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Their lack of enthusiasm and initiative can poorly affect team communication, achievement, customer satisfaction, and, eventually, company growth. In the entrepreneurial ecosystem, where agility and adaptability are key, quitting can be particularly detrimental. Thanks to Valev Laube, The VL Studios ! #4-

Entrepreneur 109

Entrepreneur Employee Revenue LLC 109

Hearpreneur

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Their lack of enthusiasm and initiative can poorly affect team communication, achievement, customer satisfaction, and, eventually, company growth. In the entrepreneurial ecosystem, where agility and adaptability are key, quitting can be particularly detrimental. Thanks to Valev Laube, The VL Studios ! #4-

Entrepreneur 108

Entrepreneur Employee Revenue LLC 108

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 20, 2019

Startups tend to put a premium on being “agile,” but that doesn’t always work – and certainly won’t replace the effective collaboration a business needs to grow. Over the years, the Truss team has worked with several early-stage startups, and noticed a consistency in inter-series problems (regardless of the industry).

Technical Cofounder 104

Technical Cofounder Burn Rate Seed Stage Cofounder 104

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Over my career as a serial entrepreneur I observed that since the late 1990s, no early-stage Silicon Valley investor had used business plans to screen investments. Traction and evidence from customers were what investors were looking for – even in “slow” sectors like healthcare and energy. And there it was. Berkeley-wide.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Partly out of the fact that in 1 week I depart for England to speak at LeWeb, attend our DataSift board meeting and generally make myself available to the DataSift team to meet their customers, partners and employees. I would say the norm for many early-stage companies is somewhere between 6-10 in-person meetings per year.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Where to Play

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

Yet, very soon he and his team discovered that their drone can perform many different jobs, for different types of customers. It begins with characterising your core technologies or unique abilities in their own right, to help you uncover different applications of these abilities, and different types of customers who may need them.

Agile 54

Agile Technical Review Sales Cycle Distribution 54

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Since every situation is unique, there is no perfect solution to any engineering, customer or competitor problem, and you shouldn’t agonize over trying to find one. An example of a reversible decision could be adding a product feature, a new algorithm in the code, targeting a specific set of customers, etc.

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. Startups, are not about executing a plan where the product, customers, channel are known. This post is part one. to get hard-earned information.

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Agile – you may find the real opportunities for your company was somewhere else. Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? Yet for every founder there are 10-20 other employees who take the near-equivalent risks in joining an early-stage company. How quickly will you recover?

Cofounder 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 14, 2008 How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people Frequency is more important than talking to the "right" customers, especially early on. Youll know when the person youre talking to is not a potential customer - they just wont understand what youre saying.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

SoCal CTO

JUNE 26, 2012

Investors and early customers were becoming worried about the ability of the founder to deliver. Instead, what they had was a contract that promised Agile Software Development with Rapid Iterations and an incredibly vague list of features. They couldn't plan their business. My belief is that you shouldn't sign that contract.

Software Developers 254

Software Developers Software Development Agile Fractional CTO 254

Up and Running

AUGUST 8, 2018

By reviewing major initiatives on a monthly basis, we can stay agile and make changes as needed. As we learn more about our customers and our market, we might shift strategies and develop new milestones. For those early-stage startups, this step of the meeting may be the most important step and take the longest.

Software Review 65

Software Review Business Plan Product Forecast 65

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

The first time a few brave corporate innovators tried to overlay the Lean tools and techniques that work in early-stage startups in an existing corporation, the result was chaos, confusion, frustration and ultimately, failure. Fast forward to today. We can adapt these startup tools for use inside the corporation.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

View from Seed

MAY 14, 2019

You needed to find the most scrappy and cost efficient way to get a product out, and in the process learned tons about the market and customer you are trying to serve. Their early hires are probably much stronger too, which allows for better execution as well. Investors needed to see real points of proof before they got interested.

Founder 256

Founder Agile Cofounder Seed Capital 256

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 9, 2018

To help you, we’ve assembled useful branding and marketing tips to help your beauty business reach and connect with customers. The design thinking process may have originated with designers, but the business world has started to take notice because of the agility, speed, and innovation that it promises. Get to know your customer.

Marketing 90

Marketing Social Media Cofounder Design 90

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 17, 2016

How they think and feel; their sense of community; and their appetite to share their opinions are all creating new paradigms for how any business, regardless of size, connects with its customers. According to our research, millennials ardently avoid calling customer service. Old school customer service rules haven’t changed.

Customer 100

Customer Singapore Advisory Board Asia 100

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

The companies I spoke to all agreed that the community there was extremely supportive, especially in the critical ulta-early-stage. Then, create an encouraging environment for early-stage companies. Provide early seed capital, and be the ones to make those introductions. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Continuous Deployment 113

www.bothsidesofthetable.com

MAY 13, 2012

They care about the quality of what is build more than they care about end customers. They know how to estimate work units, how to manage the agile development process and how to get the most out of their teams. Trust me, as you grow these issues become “gating items” to winning large customers and keeping them happy.

Fractional VPE 89

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Fractional CTO CTO Hire 89

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. What are Early Stage VC’s Really Asking? How many are there?

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. A few successful ones do all these things.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

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. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. Why don’t we have standards for what metrics VC’s want to see from their early stage startup teams?

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Business Model Balance Sheet 290

View from Seed

APRIL 8, 2020

He helps early-stage startups with sales, marketing, and general “go to market” topics. Understand Your Customer and Their Timelines. If you’re early enough, you’ve still got options and you haven’t quite placed your bets yet. Which is they’re flexible and agile. Chill Out & Build Brand.

B2B 156

B2B Angel Investor Vertical Early Stage 156

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

A discounted price is available for early stage entrepreneurs and students. In 2002 I became exposed to the idea of “agile software development&# and subsequently was a first round investor in Rally Software which is now the market leader in Agile application lifecycle management software. Expo SF (May.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Steve Blank

MARCH 7, 2012

The class is intensely and deliberately experiential to develop the mindset, reflexes, agility and resilience an entrepreneur needs to search for certainty in a chaotic world. The premise of the class is that startups, are not about executing a plan where the product, customers, channel are known. And do it in 8 weeks. Team GameSpeed.

Lean 256

Lean Business Model Agile United States 256

The Startup Magazine

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

As a startup, it can be difficult to produce and stick to a specific brand image when you are in the early stages of your business, but it is imperative that you stick to your brand. If the image of your business is constantly shifting and changing, your customers will struggle to find you, and this can be detrimental to your growth.

Social Media 72

Social Media Early Stage Algorithm Agile 72

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. These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138