Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering. What Does WWII Have to Do with Silicon Valley?

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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 142

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

We were constantly creating metrics to see the effects of different PR messages, channels and audiences on end-user purchases. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. The Potrero benchmark strategy was one component of this creating end user demand through PR.) The same was true for the Product Marketing group.

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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.

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Your sales people can gather the crowd, work the crowd and use their sales skills to see if prospects in the audience have interest. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. The difference between booths offering a demo and those without one is striking. One of them is a loser. Go to trade shows like it matters.

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Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

I’ve built my company using the Customer Development Model from Day One. I recently completed the Validation step (less the industry analyst presentations) and am ready to move on to Customer Creation. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. So the ask is made — shall it be given?

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

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