Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

And to today, when its major product is simply innovation. When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions and even billions of users can happen in years versus decades. The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle.

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Venture Chronicles

AUGUST 2, 2013

3) It all starts with the product: Companies can overcome a great many challenges with band-aids, duct tape, and bailing wire. but one aspect of a startup and/or growth stage company that cannot be glossed over is the product. It all starts with the product.

Product 62

Product CTO Hire Architecture Startup 62

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 6, 2014

Isaac Cambron is co-founder and CTO of Zensight.co , whose pre-launch product enables sales reps to find and use their best content to close more deals. Below, he answers questions about developing products from scratch, as well as the difficult technology choices and tradeoffs CTOs must make.

Technology 334

Technology Ruby Startup Engineer 334

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. In the US, about 50% of small businesses fail in the first five years. This reduces guesswork, time, money and effort.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? What the winners start with is the realization that in a world of continuous disruption, they have only a few years to develop new capabilities or be pushed over the brink. Is it that some CEOs are better than others? Are their people smarter?

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

ConversionXL

JUNE 19, 2018

Positioning: Is it really the product you have to differentiate or is it the experience? The growth system is broken: product, marketing and sales are siloed. Sales compensation is a rule. Development = rules. Alexa Hubley: The Agile Marketing Playbook. Create your agile process: Map (start at the end).

Technical Review 103

Technical Review Agile Analytics Conversion 103

The Next Web

MARCH 6, 2014

The business development team needs to see the customer feedback they deliver make it back into the product, and the tech team needs to see reasonable requests to develop new features without a constant stream of changing direction. Practice Agile Development. . - Phil Chen , Givit. Build Trust.

Technical Review 129

Technical Review Development Team Review Developer Agile 129

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

Among these obstacles exists the idea of product viability and adaptability. While the success of a product is heavily dependent upon value, it’s not uncommon for many to fail in their very early stages—this is especially true with little funding, research, and long-term planning. Agility, Adaptiveness, and Responsiveness.

Software Review 100

Software Review Management Early Stage Startup 100

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2022

This 100+-year-old company has seven major product divisions, each with hundreds of products. To succeed they realized this isn’t simply coming up with one new product. An edited version of this article previously appeared in the Boston Consulting Group’s strategy think tank website. Are these the real problems?

Framework 389

Framework Distribution Channel Leadership 389

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

With all these new tasks, there’s no way you can also manage the projects and client relationships and internal product development, so you’ll need a project manager or a sales person or an office manager or some kind of help, and all of those come out of your profits. Build a product. Lack of focus kills.

America 330

America Employee Hiring HTML 330

YoungUpstarts

JULY 22, 2020

by Andrea Fryrear, author of “ Mastering Marketing Agility “ The profound transformations in the world over the past 3 months have led to a radical and rapid fire transformation of consumers’ preferences and needs. That’s the power of the MVP, and of lean and agile approaches in general. An Exercise to Generate Your MVP.

SCRUM 162

SCRUM Agile Customer Framework 162

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 14, 2014

As companies strive to stay agile and innovative, they’ve discovered that units of 8 to 12 people work best as the natural size of high-performance teams. This is the magic number for leadership teams, product teams, research teams, design teams, and more. I definitely know that those jerks from Sales have their own selfish agenda.

Agile 196

Agile Leadership Architecture Product Development 196

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. They communicated this to product management who looked at all of the internal requirements we had generated (e.g. and product management worked with me to decide what to build & when. They taped people using existing products.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2020

After investigating these successes, I have isolated certain strategy elements which I now offer to you as expeditors of success in starting a new business, independent of the product or service you are offering, as well as the market segment you are targeting. Look for tools to automate and simplify strategy execution.

Advisory Board 308

Advisory Board Agile Social Media Metrics 308

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. The Business Plan is Dead.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Hearpreneur

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

Tesla has always put a huge emphasis on product development and technological advancement. Shopify swiftly came in with solutions that allowed these firms to turn their point-of-sale terminals into e-commerce storefronts and begin online operations the same day. Thanks to Christina Giaquinto, Modular Closets ! 11- Microsoft.

Technical Review 118

Technical Review Entrepreneur Software Review SEO 118

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. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. The Agile Board. Growth like this, this early in a company’s lifecycle rarely happens. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

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. He has a good team, and theyve shipped a working product to many customers.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

During a lull in her practice she got a serendipitous opportunity to shift gears completely and ended up leading software product development teams. Adriana holds a unique position: Expert in the industry, able to "geek out" with her target customer, yet capable of leading a product team. At best, they could copy.

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. In fact, this company hasn’t shipped any new products in months. What’s going on?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

Customer personas are often talked about in marketing and product design, but they’re almost never done well. You use them to make better marketing, product, and business decisions and to keep your customer top-of-mind when doing so. This post contains video, click to play]. They all mean the same thing, though.

Software Review 115

Software Review Design Agile Analytics 115

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

For the last 75 years products (both durable goods and software) were built via Waterfall development. This process forced companies to release and launch products by model years, and market new and “improved” versions. The Old Days – Waterfall Product Development. Waterfall – The Customer View.

Continuous Deployment 329

Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 329

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

MAY 22, 2019

Companies are investing in innovation training, mostly learning frameworks like Lean, Agile, or Design Thinking. Nearly all that training is for dedicated innovation teams , or employees who are focused on new product development. Engaged support for strategic and tactical innovation initiatives developed by others.

Operations 54

Operations Employee Technical Review Agile 54

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2018

Corporate Agility. Transparency correlates to agility (Does your CEO know how many tests you ran last month?). Facts don’t change minds – true for both sales and customers. Understand growth accounting – new, resurrected vs churned = net growth (can also look at this at feature level, not only product).

Retention 106

Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 8, 2019

This allows you to determine upcoming customer behavior and sales trends , restructure your inventory as needed, and develop appropriate marketing campaigns. Stay Agile. Agility is a watchword of the modern economy, associated with software and security, but also with product development and marketing strategy.

Small Business 153

Small Business Agile Analytics Finance 153

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 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. Planning is another key distinction.

Agile 120

Agile Development Team Review Leadership Merger 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

It should go without saying that this post is not advice, nor is it recommendation of what you should do, it’s simply my observation of how companies using Customer Development positioned themselves to successfully raise money from venture investors. I believe all this advice is wrong. It’s akin to putting lipstick on a pig.

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? When we build products, we use a methodology. We know some products succeed and others fail, but the reasons are complex and the unpredictable. a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit." Whats wrong with this picture?

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

ConversionXL

MAY 1, 2017

One of the greatest threats to long-term success is when companies aren’t vigilant enough about responding to the changes in their market—whether it’s by failing to spot product or channel fatigue, acknowledge new competition, make needed updates to products or marketing adjustments in a timely fashion, or embrace new technology coming online.

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Algorithm Channel Analytics 127

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2019

Go beyond standard sources of voice of customer data ; better options are: Interview founders (the original “customers”); Thank-you page surveys; Usertesting.com; Mine sales calls; Mine support tickets; Mine Facebook comments ; Mine online reviews. Conversion/Optimization teams might become a nightmare for marketing and product teams.

Artificial Inteligence 114

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Metrics SEO 114

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

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. Customers dont care if you have good metrics, only if you have a good product. We set sales targets from day one, $300 the first month.

San Francisco 98

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 30, 2010

These can be research tasks, like finding every tech blogger who blogs about cats, repetitive tasks like creating 100 affiliate links for products in a Word document, or ongoing tasks like monitoring a handful of job boards and posting new jobs to your website. Agile Development, meet Agile Business. The Lesson.

Software Review 284

Software Review Startup Technical Review Hosting 284

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. Every large company, whether it can articulate it or not, is executing a proven business model (s).

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335