Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

For example: Mitch Kapor was a founder of Lotus. Ben Horowitz ’s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things is driving the conversation around startup management this year. He’s a founder of Andreessen Horowitz, which has backed Facebook, Skype, Jawbone, and dozens of other companies whose products you use.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Posted on June 11, 2009 by steveblank When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves: Are you comfortable with: Chaos – startups are disorganized Uncertainty – startups never go per plan Are you: Resilient – at times you will fail – badly.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. In most agile development systems, there is a notion of the "product backlog" a prioritized list of what software is most valuable to be developed next.

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Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2015

So will failing to understand your customers. Successful founders have a laser-like focus and commitment; a keen understanding of customers’ needs; and a tenacious spirit, said the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on Sirius XM Channel 111. Reetu Gupta. And download any of the past shows here.).

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Jeremy Johnson.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

If you’re a technical startup founder, one of the painful lessons is that it’s not enough just to build a great product. You must also understand the value the product provides customers (along with the rest of your business model.). Clay Hebert , founder of Crowdfunding Hacks. Clay Hebert.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

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Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Jeremy Johnson.

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Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

The Next Web

AUGUST 2, 2014

Tenoch Esparza is the co-founder of Sensory Percussion, a next-generation electronic drum startup. As Steve Blank preaches in his book The Startup Owner’s Manual, you need to get out of the building for customer discovery interviews and see your customers’ pupils dilate when they see your product.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

It wasn’t so many years ago that starting a new e-commerce business on the Internet was a complex custom development project, usually costing a million dollars or more. Work out of your home, and keep your own books. A programmer can build a new smartphone app for a few thousand dollars.

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Cost Entrepreneur Burn Rate Social Media 405

Steve Blank

JULY 24, 2012

Brent Frei, the Onyx CEO walks in and he looked about 6’ 8’ and something told me he could tear telephone books in half. I Know A Great Customer. A year later my co-founders and I had formed Epiphany. Back at Epiphany I convinced my co-founders that integrating the two systems was worth the effort and they dove in.

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Seattle Cofounder Engineer Sales 262

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

A well-organized library of best practices for founders in your vertical, which you can share as appropriate. First Round Search , Startupschool , and GSV Passport are examples of comprehensive founder resources from investors. I have developed a founder curriculum on my blog. Customer Development.

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Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

Below, you will find a list of books recommended by serial entrepreneur David S. In this book, Michael Gerber walks you through the entire process, dispelling the myths as he goes. This book demonstrates how what really matters is the planning process, and not a plan you use once and never again. Not so much. B y Michael E.

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Startup Venture Capital Angel Investor Lean 80

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

He would go on to be a co-founder of two mechanical engineering software companies.) Years later he would become a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital.) Our head of finite element analysis came from General Motor’s Chevy division, where he headed up one of their analysis groups. (He

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Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 218

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious. Welcome to the Internet bubble.)

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Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 248

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Create a stream of translational entrepreneurship literature for practitioners (founders and VC’s.) . In research universities with entrepreneurship programs adjuncts are typically founders, VC’s or business executives. Expose adjuncts to the breadth and depth of academic research in the field. It’s Been A Trip. He was right.

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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.

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Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 142

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting. October 13, 2008 6:47 PM Luke G said. Eric, love the blog.

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www.startuplessonslearned.com

MAY 4, 2012

Founders Dilemmas: Equity Splits. The following is an excerpt from HBS Professor Noam Wasserman’s new book, The Founders Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup. On average, the founders who keep the most control over their company make the least amount of money.

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Equity Founder Technical Cofounder Cofounder 72

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Unlike Intel chips, MIPS chip architecture also made it possible to plug in a math co-processor. Oh, and since it was not code compatible with anything, we were going to have to port all the key scientific applications our customers needed (as soon as we figured out who they were.) A few days later Gordon became a founder.

North Carolina 129

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 129

Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2015

A month ago, Jason, one of my founder friends, shut down his startup. 1 rule every founder hears over and over: Nobody wants your product until you prove it. How come so many founders still wake up to this horrible truth, after months or years of hard work? Customer Development for us meant a lot of hard-won learnings.

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Cofounder Lean Customer Development Startup 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. I am heavily indebted to earlier theorists, and highly recommend the books Lean Thinking and Lean Software Development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Andy Cunningham , founder and CEO of Cunningham Collective. Joining me in the Stanford University studio were. Andy Cunningham. They don’t know what you do.

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Washington Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Cofounder 295

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

The Cinepak codec was written by the engineer who would become my cofounder at Rocket Science Games.) A company called Aapps, founded by Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari), make a product called the MicroTV, Digivideo, and Digivideo Color in the 1990 – 1991 timeframe that displayed live video in a window on the Mac.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

I´m reading (and enjoying a lot) your book “the 4 steps…&#. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) But the rest; sales, marketing, bus dev is actually customer development that the founder needs to understand.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. What is customer development?

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 16, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. David Comisford , founder and CEO of EduSourced. Omar Zenhom , co-founder of The $100 MBA. As a founder, Omar learned to leverage his strengths.

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Cofounder Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Ohio 120

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. The best resources there are his book Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change and the gentle introduction at extremeprogramming.org. What is customer development?

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

The Lean LaunchPad class teaches students how to build a Lean Startup using business model design, customer development and agile engineering. Teams have to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week.) However, going through the customer development process showed me the danger in that kind of thinking.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

I am grateful to everyone who helped make this event a success, especially my co-organizers Charles Hudson and David Sachs. When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. All video from the conference is available for free at Justin.tv

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 27, 2014

It wasn’t so many years ago that starting a new e-commerce business on the Internet was a complex custom development project, usually costing a million dollars or more. Work out of your home, and keep your own books. A programmer can build a new smartphone app for a few thousand dollars.

Entrepreneur 260

Entrepreneur Burn Rate Social Media LLC 260

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

He started the Stanford Honors Co-op in 1954 which allowed companies in the valley to send their engineers to Stanford graduate engineering programs. This lack of information meant that every World War II movie or book that had airplanes on bombing missions in it was wrong. Leo Beranek led the EAL and went on to co-found BBN.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. These founders have not managed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Blank , to create a scalable and repeatable sales process. Get product into customers’ hands. More on that in a moment.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 9, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Joining me in SiriusXM’s studio in New York were: Drew Silverstein , co-founder and CEO of the music technology venture Amper Music. Drew Silverstein.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2010

Last, Ive tried to keep this blog updated with events , slides , audio , video and books that are helpful as well. Last, Ive tried to keep this blog updated with events , slides , audio , video and books that are helpful as well. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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ConversionXL

MARCH 28, 2014

Neil Patel, co-founder of CrazyEgg says that even though the video below brought in an extra $21,000/ month back in 2012, it was the script that was really responsible for such incredible growth. We quickly get away from the written page and the script, and we really develop the movie in storyboards. To see how things flow.”

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

And Silicon Valley’s pay-it-forward culture is a huge help to startup founders. Gary Marcus , one of the country’s best-known cognitive psychologists, is a professor of psychology and neural science at NYU and founder of Geometric Intelligence. The stuff founders are made of. It’s actually not that different a skill set.

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