Burn Rate Customer Development Revenue Sales 
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.
Steve Blank
FEBRUARY 11, 2010
The Customer Development process is the way startups quickly iterate and test each element of their business model , reducing customer and market risk. The first step of Customer Development is called Customer Discovery. outside the building and test them in front of customers. VP of Sales – “Sure.”
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Steve Blank
FEBRUARY 13, 2024
Marketing and capital expenses (new factory, high R&D expense) were predicated on consumer-scale sales. In addition, they’ve created an entirely new $85+ billion subscription business model; the App Store, iTunes, Apple Care, Apple Pay, Apple Cash, Apple Arcade, Apple Music, Apple TV.
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. With a little help from a friend, you can handle expenses, revenue, and payroll, with QuickBooks or a similar package.
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 3, 2009
Let’s take your revenue line. It should talk about how many customers you think you will acquire and how much you’ll charge for your product. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? Or lower revenue assumptions.
Steve Blank
FEBRUARY 16, 2010
In my last post I described what happened when a company prematurely scales sales and marketing before adequately testing its hypotheses in Customer Discovery. All discussion focused on “missing the revenue plan.”. They told the CEO (who was the technical founder) that the sales team should focus on “other markets.”
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 18, 2010
For decades startups were managed by pretending the company would follow a predictable path (revenue plan, scale, etc.) In fact, for decades if you drew this diagram on day one of a startup VC’s would nod sagely and everyone would get to work heading to first customer ship. The Revenue Plan – The Third Fatal Assumption.
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